“Duct Tape & Bubblegum” Patch School Tech

The 800-student K‑8 Fair Haven School started this academic year with three computer labs of 20 computers with more than 10 years mileage. Many of those could barely open a word processing file. Broken computers sat on the bottom floor of the building.

Classrooms had blackboards, not whiteboards or LCD projectors.

Then the school received 300 Chromebooks — but the principal warns that all that technology may become useless in a few years if he can’t find a way to hire someone to maintain it.

Fair Haven Principal Heriberto Cordero’s experience reflects two tech realities in New Haven schools: Sometimes kids are held back because of outdated or non-functional technology. Other times, thanks to a recent push to invest in tech, schools get up-to-date gadgets and gizmos, but lack the resources to make the best of use of them or to keep them working right.

Fair Haven is one of 42 schools that have no full-time technician to oversee the influx of new devices district leaders are rushing into the hands of students and teachers. Officials in the IT department are pushing for a major increase in funding to bring full-time staff to fix technology and train school leaders to properly use it.

Kevin Moriarty, who runs the school district’s IT department, has created a plan to centralize technology purchasing and support across all schools. But recent slashes to the state and city budget are proving to be major hurdles to putting that plan into action.

Recognizing that the department needs support, the Harp administration is looking to hire a chief information officer (CIO) who would oversee IT for both the city government and the Board of Education. Currently, the position is vacant, but the Board of Alders approved Mayor Toni Harp’s request for a $101,000 salary in the current fiscal year’s budget. She is requesting a bump to a more competitive $145,000 salary for the upcoming fiscal year.

With Moriarty’s help, Cordero leveraged state and federal funds to bring in 10 carts of 30 Chromebooks each to Fair Haven, as well as 80 iPads, with the plan to grow the latter number to more than 300 in the next year or two. About $436,000 was spent to bring in classroom projectors, devices for students and teachers, and revamped wireless infrastructure. An additional 30 new desktops computers are headed to one Fair Haven School lab in the fall. ​“Teachers really feel like the floodgates opened up,” he said.

New to the school this academic year, Cordero has big plans. He wants a Mac lab and a PC lab. He wants every classroom teacher to have access to his or her own cart of laptops or iPads. Soon more than half of the school’s staff and teachers will have their own computers.

Still, many of the new devices have not yet been handed to students or teachers. The school has no full-time technician. Two library media specialists and a technology teacher use any extra time to help out with the school’s growing batch of technology. A Gateway Community College student works 19.5 hours per week to help service the Chromebooks and train teachers to use them.

“We’ve only gotten as far as we have because we were able to bring in a part-time person,” Cordero said.

Initial Tech Investments

New Haven schools started seriously investing in technology a few years ago — costing more than $5.7 million over the last three years.

A 2013 – 14 set of grants totaling around $640,000 allowed the district to install wireless in every school. Another $1.6 million state grant in advance of the Common Core-aligned SBAC test replaced many Windows XP computers with the more updated Windows 7 computers. About 4,000 Windows XP computers remain. Another $140,000 updated the bandwidth of 14 schools.

This summer, a combination of state grants will allow for faster ​“AC wireless” technology to be installed in nine schools across the district: Lincoln-Bassett, Bishop-Woods, Hillhouse, Coop, Wilbur Cross, High School in the Community, New Haven Academy, Troup and Truman Schools. Moriarty said he and Deputy Superintendent Imma Canelli met with the department’s staff to figure out which schools were most in need.

At the beginning of the academic year, curricular leaders worked with school administrators to create inventories of technology at each school and to figure out what they needed in order to teach students most effectively — merging IT and curriculum, said Chief Operating Officer Will Clark. That process is almost finished.

Moriarty developed a ​“SharePoint” site which allows people centrally and at each school to file and access information on the devices in their buildings.

Tech Equity

Some schools have more technology than others, though this disparity is quickly dissipating as the district puts more funding toward getting technology into students’ hands. But Moriarty said devices mean little without the right amount of personnel to maintain them and make sure they last for as long as possible, instead of having to be replaced in three or four years.

With 582 students, Engineering & Science University Magnet School (ESUMS) has 105 Chromebooks, 23 Mac desktops, 214 PC laptops and 141 PC desktops. Of those PC desktops, 58 are in three PC labs in the school.

Clark said ESUMS is a good example of a school that needed specific software to carry out its science and math-based curricula.

The school’s new building on University of New Haven’s campus will include another set of technological devices, meaning some of its current set could go to other schools, Moriarty said.

ESUMS senior Hana Bidon said she has access to computers every day in school, for most of her classes, including physics, engineering and technology. During study hall, she uses computers in the ​“technology room” to access ​“Edmodo,” an online system that allows teachers to collect assignments and submit grades.

The computers in the engineering class are slower — possibly because students are rendering large files through ​“Autodesk” 3D design software.

ESUMS does not have a full-time technician. The engineering teacher can fix localized problems with computers, but calls in Moriarty’s team for larger connectivity or bandwidth issues.

Without trained staff in the schools regularly, out-of-date devices accumulate in the building. Of a total 113 computers, Sound School has a few Gateway desktop computers from 1999 and 2001, in use this academic year, though the hardware company has not been in business since 2007. ​“Some schools still keep old computers, even when they get new ones,” Moriarty said.

Board of Ed student member Kimberly Sullivan — a Sound School student — said many of the school’s computers crashed during the first year of SBAC state tests two years ago. Many of the library’s computers don’t work and just one connects to a working printer. ​“If 20 people have to print something, they all have to use the same computer,” she said.

“I feel like we spend so much money on programs like Naviance but we can’t get online,” Sullivan said. ​“Instead of spending money to make sure we have functional Internet, we’re spending it on all these programs that we can’t access.”

Demand For Staff

Clark said school leaders are required to consult the IT department before making decisions on what programs or devices to buy, to ensure they fit with the larger plan. ​“We don’t want it to be like we’re stopping them,” he said. ​“The whole function is to have a full system that functions,” not one that’s disconnected.

But that’s not enough, Moriarty argued. The department’s budget has not changed from $30,000 in more than 15 years. His staff is burnt out — he allowed one person a ​“mental health” day last week, realizing he needed the time off.

His team, Moriarty said, is good at ​“using duct tape and bubble gum to fix” technology, because ​“the funding is not there to fix the problem.”

He is asking for a $350,000 increase in per year in the general fund toward technology, which will get all computers in all schools at least up to Windows 7 or within six years, instead of the ​“10-year cycle some schools” are stuck in, without funding to replace old devices.

He wants $160,000 to add four 3144 union employees to his department, who will each cover a different region of the district with a different set of schools, being proactive about keeping the technology updated and responding to specific issues.

Centralizing the technology support system has many benefits, Moriarty argued. Only eight full-time IT technicians exist in individual schools, leaving Moriarty and his five technicians 42 schools to oversee. Those five technicians are consultants through a contract with Advanced Office Systems.

Union employees would ​“have a greater ownership of their area” and work than a consultant who ​“constantly [has] to question year by year whether you have a job here.”

Moriarty also seeks an additional $100,000 to add two technical trainers and station them on each side of the city, to each be responsible for training teachers on how to use technological devices and programs on a scheduled basis throughout the year, and a network project leader at $60,000.

Currently, 33 library media specialists ​“assume the role” of technicians and other schools hand the role to full-time teachers or part-time staff, who cannot necessarily spend the necessary time fulfilling it, he said.

Superintendent Garth Harries praised the idea of ​“regionalizing” and centralizing IT support. In the absence of the funding for that, he said, the IT department should work with schools to figure out how to share existing resources, such as by having schools collaborate to fund a shared full-time technician.

Technology ​“has been an under-attended part of our infrastructure for some time,” he said. In the past couple of years, his team has worked to ​“free resources” to invest in putting more functional devices into schools. School and district officials work together to determine how much to budget on technology and what to buy.

Currently, school administrators are talking with district leaders about how their existing resources align with their goals to improve their schools. Harries said all principals are requesting more resources, including some asking for more technological devices. Those conversations will finish this week and he will take a summary to the Board of Education after that.

Harries said he has asked the IT department to instill in school leaders the fact that investing in technology costs more than the price of just buying the devices — it also means investing in the support that goes along with maintaining it.

Working The Budget

The likelihood Moriarty will get exactly what he asked for is low. But officials acknowledge the risks of not investing.

Proposed cuts to the city’s budget include $770,000 in lost state cost-sharing grants for the schools, which the Board of Ed will have to find on its own. And the board will likely have to figure out how to cover another $565,000 in cuts from the city’s general fund.

But the city does have some money in its current proposed budget that could go toward helping out Moriarty’s team, in the form of a salary for a new CIO. Controller Daryl Jones told the Independent a CIO would be responsible for supporting the Board of Ed and city IT departments.

“Over the last year and a half, we’ve recognized that the Board of Ed could use more assistance, with resources that we currently have and pay for. For example, we have an IT consultant that we use” who could help the schools’ IT team manage employment, upgrades and remote updates, Jones said.

The CIO would ​“create standardization” in technology across schools as well as ​“identify deficiencies and correct them,” he said.

“The Board of Ed has done the best they can with the money they have. I want to give them more,” he said. ​“I’m not trying to take over their department. I’m trying to give them more tools that they can get to run it.”

Moriarty said he was not aware of the proposal to have the CIO oversee IT at the schools. He presented his plan to Board of Ed members at last Monday afternoon’s Operations and Finance Committee. The committee’s co-chair, Darnell Goldson, asked him many questions ​“to understand where the deficiencies were” in past investments.

“I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was surprised by how outdated the software is that we’re using and how that puts our district and our students in danger,” Goldson told the Independent after the meeting.

Though board members have repeatedly pushed Superintendent Harries and Chief Financial Officer Victor De La Paz to cut 7 percent of each department in the central office at 54 Meadow St., Goldson said he didn’t think that would necessarily work in the IT department.

“In this case, it’s probably smarter to centralize the purchasing of new equipment and software as opposed to decentralizing,” he said. ​“You shouldn’t have teachers going in and buying software and hardware for IT purposes because they’re not the experts. Certainly [Moriarty’s] argument carried weight.”

And he said he realized capital funds from the city would not be a good way to pay for technology. Many devices last for three years, but would leave the city paying the debt off for about 10 years.

Goldson said board members would begin having specific conversations about where to invest and where to cut starting this week. ​“It’s a problem that we’re just starting to attack.”

He and other board members called for better technology support for Hillhouse High School, after CCR seniors said in October that they did not have the technology they needed to apply for college. The seniors said they lacked regular access to computers, as well as training for programs such as Naviance to organize their college materials.

Divvying Devices

Hillhouse school leaders at the time said they had spent a lot of money on bringing technology into the building. But very little of it went to seniors.

With a state Commissioner’s Network grant during its re-design into a multi-academy school in 2014 – 15, Hillhouse got a major influx of technology, including 24 desktops and two laptop carts for IDEA Academy, 20 desktops for the Law, Public Safety and Health Academy, and five desktops for a new ​“fabrication lab.” The school is divided into four mini-academies, including a new freshman academy this year and a senior academy being phased out by next fall.

A grant oriented toward preparing schools for the Common Core-aligned SBAC tests funded a laptop cart of 32 laptops in the school. And two rooms were wired for power and network to serve as computer labs across from the library. The building was also wired with 125 wireless access points, which cost about $63,000.

Currently, the school has about 956 students and about 753 computers, including 408 desktops and 339 laptops. About 212 of the computers run Windows XP, an outdated version compared to Windows 7.

Katryna Gaither, desktop consultant, was assigned to Hillhouse in 2013 – 14, funded by a grant. When the grant ended, she was pulled back to central office and the school never filled the position. Now, she returns to the school a few times per week to help the paraprofessional that supports technology. 

Several weeks after she worked with the school to build two labs in 2014, administrators decided to dismantle one of them. The computers were put in storage.

Now, the only labs in use for students outside of IDEA, LPSH and SMART academies are in the library and the one lab adjacent. Hillhouse seniors, in the College Career Readiness Academy, only had regular access to those labs over the past year, she said. Usually the adjacent lab was used for classroom discussions, testing and presentations, as well as afterschool activities, she said.

And the library’s technology was outdated, since new devices went to the other academies, Gaither said. The two ​“academy-neutral” labs have about 52 devices between them, with less than the total number functional, she said.

LPSH Academy has four laptop carts, and IDEA has five laptop carts and one iPad cart. Earlier this year, SMART and CCR also received two carts of a total 60 Chromebooks, paid for out of an extra $675,000 federal Title I grant authorized by Superintendent Harries in February.

Though students in three of the four academies seem to have adequate access to devices, they don’t necessarily have the full means to utilize them.

When a group of alders and Board of Ed members took a tour of the school in March, they visited a ​“computer applications” class as the wireless signal was too weak for students to do their regular curriculum—and had been all week, according to the teacher.

Hillhouse is one of the schools getting a wireless boost this summer.

Tech Support Case Study

Not all schools without a full-time technician are having trouble maintaining technology. After receiving state Commissioner’s Network funds in 2014, Lincoln-Bassett School Principal Janet Brown-Clayton realized she needed an in-house coach in order to teach students.

Lorrie Quirk applied for an unrelated position at the K‑6 school but showed she had a working knowledge of computers and technology. Brown-Clayton turned her down for the other position, but asked whether she was interested in filling the newly created role of instructional coach in technology and data.

Quirk quickly accepted. Though she does not manage the technology full-time, she is the point person in the building for integrating it into teachers’ curricula.

Working with Moriarty, she performed an audit of existing technology and developed a plan to get at least one device into the hand of every student and teacher. She pulled out computers stuck in storage. She acquired 80 computers from Mauro-Sheridan, which was getting brand new devices, and was able to refurbish them.

She consulted with Moriarty to decide what kinds of laptops to get all of the building’s teachers, who are using them to plan their curricula for next year. Lincoln-Bassett went from a school with one computer per classroom to one with at least four computers per classroom, as well as a fully operational computer lab. A University of New Haven senior helps two to three times per week as a liaison between the school leaders and the afterschool program directors.

Though school leaders budgeted about $150,000 over two years for technology, they ended up spending about $260,000, reallocating funds leftover from other projects and leveraging grants such as federal Title I.

They used their funding to put an interactive Eno whiteboard in every classroom and to buy what will be 195 Chromebooks by the end of this academic year, Quirk said. Each student in third through sixth grades has access to his or her own Chromebook in the school. Each kindergarten, first and second-grade student has access to an iPad.

When they first handed laptops to the students, many sixth-graders did not know how to use the devices, which Quirk said broke her heart.

“I bet we have a lot more than we would’ve had because we knew how to be good stewards of what we were getting,” Brown-Clayton said.

Students are learning how to be good stewards of their devices, whether iPads or Chromebooks, and how to stay on task even with the distraction of the Internet at their fingertips, Brown-Clayton said.

When a student is caught looking at a website unrelated to the classwork, he or she is given an extra assignment to complete, Quirk said. ​“It’s better than taking away their Chromebooks.” And they teach students how to be responsible when using the Internet, by building ​“teachable moments” into regular instruction, she said. She warns students that photos on sites and apps such as Facebook and Snapchat no longer belong to them, that a text is easy to change and falsify.

Quirk lets students take apart outdated devices and attempt to put them back together, to encourage their curiosity about technology. ​“They watch when I take it apart,” she said.

Brown-Clayton said Quirk brought her ​“kicking and screaming into the technology age.”

Every morning at 7:30 a.m., school staff meets for an hour for professional development, which includes training on how to use programs such as Google Classroom — an online, interactive toolkit for teachers to review students’ assignments. The district has no budget for teacher training so Quirk and other knowledgeable staff are responsible for bringing their peers on board.

Quirk can’t fix everything. One morning last week, a classroom teacher noticed the wireless Internet was not working. Quirk and Moriarty headed to the networks of blue wires in the data closets, where they found nothing awry. Moriarty placed a call to his team back at central office and found that the problem could be traced back to a server there. Someone there turned the server on and off. It worked.

Markeshia Ricks contributed reporting.