TECHNOLOGY PLANNING ENABLES RAPID RECOVERY FOR HURRICANE-STRICKEN SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Ted Richane
The Fratelli Group
202/822-9491
trichane@fratelli.com

Area Officials Stress Importance of Planning and Federal Funding for Education Technology Investments

Washington, DC (September 28, 2005) – Education officials across the Gulf Coast are beginning to return home to survey the massive damage to the region’s education system. Amid the devastation, however, some have a good story to tell.

School district administrators in Louisiana and Mississippi are reporting that despite large-scale structural damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, much of the education information technology infrastructure, including critical means of communication and irreplaceable student records, weathered the storms. Many are attributing these successes to federal information technology funding programs, including the E-Rate and the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) programs.

In Lake Charles, LA, one of areas hardest hit by Rita, a district official reports that the district’s technology system was up and running less than 24 hours after the hurricane hit.

“We planned ahead and devoted critical funding to prepare for a storm like this and are now in a position to recover much more quickly. Our district web site is online and providing up-to-the minute information for our more than 4,000 employees and 33,000 students, many of whom are displaced across the region and beyond,” said Sheryl Abshire, District Administrative Coordinator of Technology for the Calcasieu Parish Public Schools and Chair of the Consortium for School Networking.

Last year, Abshire’s district used local technology funds, available as a result of savings the district realized through the E-Rate program, to purchase and install a natural gas-powered generator system to provide power and air conditioning to their server farm. As a result, the district email system is in operation and the district made payroll to its more than 4,000 employees as scheduled this week.

Calcasieu has also capitalized on its EETT grants to provide professional development for school employees, thereby ensuring that they are skilled in using the Internet and email for communication. Those skills became essential for school employees, evacuated throughout the United States in the wake of Hurricane Rita, to maintain contact with the district, their colleagues and their students.

Moreover, Abshire reports that student records are all safe and secure, in contrast to other hard-hit school districts in the area.

In Mississippi, Paul Tisdale, Superintendent of Biloxi Public Schools, began a blog on the district’s web site shortly after Katrina hit. On it, he provided updates for district employees, parents and students who had left the area. With other means of communications completely wiped out, many relied on the blog for information about school conditions and schedules.

“The recent disasters in the Gulf Coast region demonstrate the importance of district investments in information technology,” said Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking. “We are seeing that the districts that were fortunate enough to use funding to build out IT infrastructure faired much better than those that were forced to rely on outdated, often paper-based systems. The value of federal programs like E-Rate and EETT simply cannot be overstated.”

About EETT
Authorized as Title II-D of the NCLB, EETT enables schools to address core teaching and learning needs through technology tools, by: allowing access to courses online otherwise not available to rural and urban students; equipping teachers to take advantage of new and emerging technology tools; providing students with the tools to compete in a highly competitive global employment market; allowing continual assessment of student progress through computer-based testing; and disaggregating and reporting of student adequate yearly progress (AYP) data.

States distribute EETT funds to districts with 50% allocated by poverty-weighted formula and 50% by competition. EETT gives schools broad discretion to spend their money on a wide range of technology acquisition, enrichment and integration purposes with at least 25% required for professional development.

About E-Rate
Established in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the E-Rate program provides $2.25 billion annually in discounts on telecommunications services, Internet access and internal connections to public and private schools and public libraries. Discount rates are based on the federal free and reduced price lunch program, with the lowest income applicants receiving the deepest discounts. E-Rate is part of the universal service program and receives its funding from the universal service fund. Since its inception in 1998, over $10 billion in E-Rate discounts have been disbursed.

About the Consortium for School Networking
Founded in 1992, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), a national non-profit organization, is the premier voice in education technology leadership. CoSN’s mission is to advance the K-12 education community’s capacity to effectively use technology to improve teaching and learning through advocacy, policy and leadership development.

CoSN leadership initiatives include: Accessible Technologies for All Students (www.accessibletech4all.org); Cyber Security for the Digital District (www.securedistrict.org); Data-Driven Decision Making (www.3d2know.org); Safeguarding the Wired Schoolhouse (www.safewiredschools.org); Taking Total Cost of Ownership to the Classroom (www.classroomtco.org); and the development of the Council of School District Chief Technology Officers (CTO Council).

CoSN’s members represent school districts, state and local education agencies, nonprofits, companies and individuals who share our vision. Visit www.cosn.org or phone 866.267.8747 to find out more about CoSN’s programs and activities supporting leadership development to ensure that information technology has a direct and positive impact on student learning in elementary and secondary schools.