Oak Ridge Schools recently opened a new Data Center at Oak Ridge High School, a press release said.
The Data Center will house all of the critical systems used to operate Oak Ridge Schools, including phones, e-mail, Internet access, and file storage, the release said. It will also serve as a connection point for the new, joint schools and city fiber project that will provide high-speed access to both the schools’ and the city’s operations.
The new facility will also allow for the consolidation of equipment previously stored at individual school buildings, the release said.
“This will result in a savings of operational costs, while providing a higher level of service to the students and staff,” the release said.
Doug Cofer, director of Oak Ridge Schools Technology Department, officially opened the newly developed Data Center, and members of the Oak Ridge Board of Education recently toured the facility.
Funding for the Data Center’s construction was accumulated during a three-year period, the release said.
“This [facility] is a great example of how the city and schools can work together to provide services more efficiently,†said Amy Fitzgerald, Oak Ridge Government Affairs and Information Services director.
The press release said the Data Center will fulfill the current need for security and reliability for all systems and allow for future growth.
“I’m very pleased to see this Data Center come online,†said Keys Fillauer, Board of Education chairman.
As Tennessee’s sixth-ranked school system, Oak Ridge Schools are dedicated to preparing students for their futures, which will be dependent on ever-evolving technology, the release said.
Trina Baughn says
“This will result in a savings of operational costs, while providing a higher level of service to the students and staffâ€
Will it teach those who struggle how to read? Will it assist those who require the extra care of a special ed aide? Will it teach our kids the dangers of drugs? Will it teach them how to drive? Will it get those who most need early intervention and transportation to the head start program in the morning?
You see, when the rest of the modern world is going to the cloud, they’ve been building this outdated center that was never mentioned to be a priority – not even in the CIP (where more important things have been relegated to the back burner like, you know, a new preschool building.) Yet, in recent years, they’ve cut countless teachers, aides, the reading recovery program (a cost I’m told of less than $10K per year), morning transportation to the preschool (though they’ve preserved the afternoon buses, go figure), the driver’s ed program (I recall a cost of $60K per year), DARE and who knows what else.
As a parent and a taxpayer, I expect much more from the highest funded school system in the state. You should too.
Andrew Howe says
I can’t imagine any ROI will come for a long while. Consolidating a system has advantages, but mostly they come from efficiency, and most of the efficiency improvements will likely be had by the IT dept. Some teachers may experience improvements, and I certainly would hope administrators will also, but you’d have to have some serious efficiency gains to justify such an expense.
I fear Trina may be correct, too, by using the term “outdated”. Not that a data center is currently an outdated concept, but with the constant change in the computing world, nearly any new endeavor ends up being behind the curve upon completion, no matter how cutting edge it was at the projects inception.
Mike Mahathy says
Sadly this is one of the most uninformed comments I have seen in awhile though I have no ill will towards any of you. I do not disagree with the premise – that schools should be about educating our children; yet the whole civilized world is moving away from paper-based everything. Teaching is no different. Instruction with a computer used in some manner was done in about every class my children had last year. Can we afford to fall behind?
Our schools already offer a variety of online learning/teaching tools including but limited to BrainPop, AR/STAR, Study Island, Grolier Online, Envision Math, online science and social studies texts, World Book, Tennessee Electronic Library, online educational videos which by the way help slower learners), and Renplace Home Connect. One of my daughters has a learning problem. She has directly benefited from some of those systems and also by being able to access online text books from home.
ORS uses Skyward as a communication tool to allow parents (and students) to track student progress in almost real time. Very importantly Skyward offers a great method for staff at each school to communicate with parents, and vice versa. At RMS we found that many parents were not receiving paper announcements carried home by students. I do not think Laurie Campbell will mind me saying that the use of Skyward, email and the phone alert system much improved on parental response.
Of course the system has necessary business functions that are most efficiently performed with use of computer software/hardware. Can we imagine a grocery store trying to check people out with an old punch key cash register! Of course not. To be competitive and offer the best product for the price businesses use computers and the best companies use them smartly and wisely. Why should a school system be any different!
Yes, computer instruction and business functions could have been done without the new data center, but as I said a grocer could still check you out with an adding ms home. Current IBM and UPS commercials use the phrase, “at the speed of business.” In today’s world, like it or not, when computers are down business suffers, in this case teaching and learning would suffer. It is also important to protect data from loss. Even the school phone system is operated over the school network and is housed in that data center. The new data center offers some back for operations to continue and provides for useful backup and recovery of system data.
More teaching and learning, enhanced learning will take place as a result of existing and increasing technology. The data room is a key to that but it in itself should not be the end. The system needs to upgrade some computers at schools, and over time add more tablet based delivery. That is part of the future of education, much more so than chalk and blackboards.
I applaud the school board and administration in securing this new facility. In my opinion failure to have done so would be a derelict of responsibility. I urge them to keep moving the system forward with technology, continue to make wise decisions.
It is also encouraging to see city government and the school system working together with this; it is a start, do more.
Trina Baughn says
Your claim that my statements are uninformed is false and you know it, Mike. No one is arguing the necessity or the merits of technology. It is a matter of prioritization.
This million dollar facility aside, the
schools already spend $2-3 million annually on
technology (and have for over 10 years.) They will purchase 150 more computers this year in addition to
the 630 they bought in the last 2 years and the 500 computers in 2007.
You simply cannot defend this type of luxury spending when they cut reading recovery. If we can’t expect our schools to teach the most fundamental of all skills to ALL of our students, any and all technology spending is wasteful.
Ck Kelsey says
Mike Saving is always the “Informed” approach.You are”Wrong” as Charlie like to say !
Sam Hopwood says
Given that the OR voters were taken to the cleaners by the school board on the new high school financing caper, it may be quite some time before financing for a new preschool will be considered.
Tracy says
How much did this cost over the 3 year period and how much will it cost to maintain and upgrade to keep up with technology? If it worked the way it was before then the money should have been used towards educational programs first. Ofcourse… they could have been paying their mortgage too….
Trina Baughn says
Total cost (including equipment/computers) was budgeted at over $1 million.
Mike Mahathy says
I would encourage anyway who “doesn’t see” what ORSchools offer to take off their sunglasses and take a look. Actually I know it can be hard to do that effectively from the outside. The school system might entertain doing a public show and tell at the high school sometime.
I have seen just a sampling. There is a lot there! We were thinking about moving from OR but having lived in other districts we wouldn’t bring ourselves to give up our children’s future. Every institution can improve, we all can. The school system here can improve too but it takes involvement from parents and community. I have seen little of that to be honest, especially from patents. Web are nonetheless very happy with our schools and do not regret one penny spent towards them.
As far as cloud computing, yes it is the future for some industries. Local school systems and hospitals do not yet fit the cloud model, maybe in time. I can say though with certainty that without a concentrated data center the school system would be in the last century.
Mike Mahathy says
At least one days it was not needed. I say it was. Yes it was needed 3 years ago but I am glad we have it. Students will directly benefit.
I worked at one of those grocery stores in the 70s that were faced with keeping their old registers or investing in better technology, in the future to compete in the market place. They choose to invest and they obtained their goals.
Thank you school board for keeping us focused. I think a majority of Oak Ridgers agree. And for the record I am not happy that teachers were laid off. If only there were more funds.
Denny Phillips says
Technology is the double-edged sword of the BOE and TEA.
On one hand, technology is, in fact, a handy educational tool, essential to preparing students for the world ahead and frequent go to when squeezing a few more dollars out of tax payers.
On the other hand, the BOE and TEA must carefully avoid the serious question about technology that must be never mentioned (like Valdemort’s name in a Harry Potter book): Why would we employee hundreds upon hundreds of employees, heat and cool dozens of school buildings, ship children to and fro, and provide school security when students could simply log on at home and have interactive education with only a handful of educators teaching via video feed?
Will we be moving forward with technology or won’t we?
Denny Phillips says
What we really must ask here is a very simple question: Should education go the way of other industries that have become outdated by technology?
Consider this, Roane State Community College trains and educates our future instructors through use of interactive video classrooms. Their 2 + 2 program allows future educators to take their last two years of instruction via computer lab in conjunction with Tennessee Tech. We train our instructors using this method, but not our children. Why?
Study upon study has indicated that home-schooled children score higher on tests and have higher proficiency rates than their traditional counterparts (be it private or public schooling). Additionally, home-schooled children are less likely to be bullied, assaulted, use drugs or alcohol, or become pregnant than their traditional counterparts.
So why don’t we want our children being educated using the same software at home that the schools are using? The answer, in my mind, boils down to two distinct reasons:
1. Parents need someone to “watch their child” while they work. With the increasing prevalence of the single parent household, the ability of an average household to provide care and oversight of a child or children is diminishing, thus schools have become a necessity for quite a different reason than originally intended, which is to say that schools, in many ways are needed for child-care and often to feed children.
2. The education industry is a behemoth industry, consuming the lion’s share of America’s tax dollars and as such wields a powerful political influence. It is the duty of the unions to ensure that regardless of technological changes, that the employment rolls of our school systems be ever-increasing at higher and higher costs.
Technology is supposed to make things easier and cheaper. Somehow, when it comes to education, the opposite appears to be true. It seems we are hesitant to buy a tractor because we don’t know what to do with the mules.
Charlie Jernigan says
Education spending in this country is not consuming the lion’s share of tax dollars. It is actually 4th behind each of Health Care, Pensions, and Defense. These three total more than half of the total tax expenditures.
Home schooled kids have benefit of wealthy and generally two parent married households with a high family focus on education, small classroom sizes, low student to teacher ratio, and almost constant individual attention. They generally use little technology for education as long as the parent-teacher feels competent in the subjects being taught, although this is changing somewhat as the homeschooling industry grows. Homeschooling is not a model that scales easily in the full expanse of the real world.
The Tennessee Virtual Academy is an example of technologies without accountability and is not what taxpayers expect to get for their tax dollars.
Much of the benefit of the technologies in our school system seem to focus on communication between the school entities and the students and their families. This provides accountability and support for education outside of normal school hours and expanded information access for both teachers and students during the school day. More instructional opportunities are being provided via technology with trained teachers available for student assistance and expanded context.
I think that the Oak Ridge Schools are providing a nice and successful balance between costs and performance and are laying a reasonable foundation for the future.
CK Kelsey says
Charlie your last post to me was “wrong” and it was done within hours of posting being closed. I could not reply to your post titled “You are WRONG”. There are more than the 3 options you claim. Spending less does not mean you have less services,You can waste less spend less and offer better services OPTION 4 of many. Just for the record.
Sincerely,CK Kelsey