[seul-edu] OSS in Schools - The fight ahead

["Kevin Stiles" <kstiles@pasco.wednet.edu>]

My First Post!

First some background….  I have been on the list about three weeks 
watching the discussions with interest.  I work for the technology 
department for the Pasco School District in Pasco, WA.  Our district is 
moderate sized, around 9,000 students depending on influx of migrant 
students, with one high school, two middle schools (another currently 
being built), and nine elementary schools.  We are working with a joint 
project with the PUD running gigabit fiber to our buildings.  Two are 
on line, three more are scheduled this year.  The rest of our buildings 
are on dedicated T-1s.  All buildings connect to the district office 
where they connect to the Internet via two T-1s. Content filtering and 
firewalling is performed via a Sonic Wall appliance.  All wiring in the 
buildings is Lucent system X, verified to 600 Mbps, 100% switched (no 
hubs:-), 100Mpbs bi-directional to the desktops (3com905 cards in all 
machines) with gigabit fiber backbones.  We have 2200 desktops, all 
running win95 or win98, min. of P133, over 70% P2-350 or higher.  All 
machines were built, loaded and installed by US!  130 HP network 
printers.  10 NT boxes for application servers, web services, DCHP, 
DNS, 19 Novell servers for file/print, 3 linux boxes as proxy and web 
caching and one Alpha running our student record system.   We will be 
converting two of the NT boxes to Linux soon for our Internet and 
Intranet servers due to the 10-20 attacks we get a day against the NT 
boxes.  We have one Network Administrator, 4 Techs (approval to hire 
one more, anyone in SE Washington interested?), one Director, one 
Helpdesk/Secretary, one data technician foe the student records.  I am 
lead tech and backup sysadmin. We also have 5 student techs who help 
after school directly under our supervision.  All are out of our 
computer engineering classes.  On a personal level I have been using 
Linux for around 7 years as a server platform, just starting to play 
with it as a desktop.  Favorite Distro – Slackware.  The Proxy/Cache 
servers are mine. They utilize Apache, Squid, PHP and MySql to give the 
teachers ability to turn off the machines in the labs via a web page.  
My design :-)   Whew, on to the point of this post.

The fight we are engaging to bring Linux to the schools has already 
been posted.  It is political, social and economical.  But it is also 
much more.

The educational system moves ponderously slow and is very adverse to 
change of any type.  Look at how many of the up and coming teachers and 
would-be teachers you have seen get discouraged and leave because they 
were not allowed to branch out and break the “This is the way it is 
done” attitude.  There is a problem when 80% of your graduates leave 
the field within the first 5 years.  From what I have seen in the 
classrooms, this goes way beyond the “I use windows/macs, this is what 
I know, this is how I was taught, I don’t have time to learn something 
else, I just want something that works” excuses.  I see what amounts 
almost to fear in technology.  Think about it:  The Teacher is God in 
their room.  Every student is there to learn from them because they 
know what they are doing.  Most teachers don’t even like the concept of 
team-teaching: reason – although they work together, they also critique 
each other.   Case in point, we attempted to put up a web-form aptitude 
test so that we could better target general weak areas in our teachers 
computer training.  The Union nixed the idea because we weren’t allowed 
to “Test” teachers, it might be used in evaluations.  The average 
teacher knows considerably less than your average middle/high school 
student when it comes to computers.  Not ness. the applications, but 
the systems themselves.  This puts the teacher in a difficult position, 
answering questions and helping with things they don’t understand well 
themselves in a non-structured environment they don’t control.  
Disclaimer:  Just my observations, and does not pertain to even most 
teachers, but enough to cause problems….

There are also perception issues, including prevalence in the 
industry.  We won the Mac vs. PC wars not because of what was 
technically better, or what people were used to.  We won because of the 
poster we had on the wall of our office:  “90% of the worlds businesses 
run on Windows, where are your students going if they don’t?”  Like it 
or not, this argument is still valid.  Although you would be very hard 
pressed to find a business that did not have Linux on a server, finding 
desktops and applications in use in the industry is much harder.  How 
can I sell the vocational department on the idea of using The Gimp when 
all the local businesses demand Adobe?

Applications are another very weak point for schools.  Yes, there are 
thousands of quality programs and more out every month.  But will Linux 
run Accelerated Reader, Star Math, Scolastic Reader, Kid Pix, UXL 
Biographies, Jostens and all the other apps that teachers and 
administrators go to conferences, see and have to have.  Teachers have 
to decide on what apps to buy/acquire to meet curriculum needs, acquire 
training on that software and prove its value.  Why learn Word Perfect 
if everyone is using Word?  Free matter little compared to whether the 
students are learning valuable skills that relate directly to JOBS.  
One day the companies that produce these programs will catch a clue at 
the future and produce portable apps, but that time has not come.  
Administration side, look at all the apps that most district 
departments have got used to.  The specialized database apps, the Kid 
Compass, the NCS Mentors, etc.  This is what they call HUGE retraining 
time and perception adjustments. 

Infrastructure is another issue.  Of our tech staff, all but one have 
degrees, all of us have industry certs of some kind or another, 
including Compaq, HP printers, Novell CNE, A+, etc.  But I am the only 
one that would have any hope of making a conversion to Linux happen.  
And I would not be willing to try.  The other techs would be willing to 
learn, but how long would it take complete novices in Linux to acquire 
the same skill sets and instinctive abilities they have with Windows 
and Novell?  Or as part of the “New Way of Doing Things” do you just 
let go valued and loyal employees?

The above points go on and on.  They are also valid.  Unfortunately, to 
break the mold requires schools that are willing to take a chance and 
possibly fail.  Most schools are under enough pressure to perform and 
show results they are rarely willing to take the chance.  Increased 
costs of keeping current, licensing issues, hardware costs and disposal 
difficulties are tipping the scale in our favor.  Every time Microsoft 
releases a system that requires 2.5 times more resources than their 
previous versions just to run, they give the Linux community another 
opportunity. 

How do you get your schools to go for open source/ Linux?  Try the 
following.  First, get industry leaders in your area to back your 
attempts.  Presentations, offers of hiring students with these skills, 
proof that the software is in use will all give you additional 
leverage.  Second, show the potential strengths of the systems and 
software.  Get other schools and businesses who are using it to do 
presentations at your school board meetings.  Choose a couple of fellow 
teachers that are interested to do a “Pilot” program and show the 
results.  Then show the cost savings.  You MUST PROVE the value in use 
before you can prove the value in price.

Well, I have ranted long enough :-)  I am willing to help within my 
abilities and time schedule as I think the goals of those on this list 
are valueable.

Incidently, I may be able to help host some projects or the like.  I 
have control over the web servers and plenty of bandwidth.

Kevin K. Stiles
Technology Department
Pasco School District
kstiles@pasco.wednet.edu
(509)543-6710

----Push is the force exerted upon the door marked "Pull".----