In Search of Catholic School Excellence

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Hello, folks. Welcome back. This week I'm joined again by the famous Becky Wang. And this week we're gonna talk about the tech budget, and I know that I can hear the eyes rolling as the tech folks and some principals think about tech budget. What's a tech budget? It's very important, especially this time of year.

We- we're kind of at that point where principals are looking at their school budgets and deciding where things are gonna go, and if this is not one of those line items, then you're in for a mistake, 'cause it's always hard to try to make these things up later. So we wanna talk today about some of the things that we think should be in that tech budget, and that way you can always plan to have a mean and lean tech budget as opposed to having a bunch of surprise costs.

So thank you, Becky, for joining again. I appreciate you participating in our little experiment here. Thanks, Thomas. So with the tech budget, it's always, I don't wanna say it's a filler, but there's always a set amount. But we don't plan ahead on what that amount is or w- how we're spending it, and I feel like a lot of the spending is, like, when there's an emergency.

Oh, no, a teacher's computer breaks. All of a sudden we have to spend $1,000 or $2,000 on a device, or s-something breaks, a copier, printer breaks. So we wanna plan ahead and use the tech budget as a guideline so that there's not so many disruptions in our day. And a lot of times we're, we don't wanna wait till something breaks.

So when we plan ahead, there's not as many disruptions in the classroom. Just think of it this way. If a projector an older projector takes five minutes to warm up, and the kids are waiting, and they're just doing a little bit busy work or just doing silent reading, five minutes over a week, that's 25 minutes of instructional time that we're, I don't wanna c- say it's wasting, but it could be spent somewhere else.

Or let's say with testing, your whole class is logging into Star or Renaissance or whatever testing site. One student's Chromebook or iPad or whatever they're testing with, it won't log in or it crashed, a battery- Mm-hmm ... some issue. Then we're wasting that student's time. They have to come back during lunchtime.

They have to be pulled out during another instructional time. So that's a lot of time wasted. So it's not just the cost of spending, but it's the cost of time that we can- Mm-hmm ... never get back. Yeah. So when we're talking about tech budget, there's three areas we really should focus on. I would say start with devices because it's the most apparent.

Everybody uses it. Second, it's more invisible. It's like the subscription all of the digital resources. And lastly, almost most important is the infrastructure and the support. It's the things that are invisible you don't see, but when that breaks down, everybody will run to you and say, "It's a tech emergency."

Yeah. Yeah, so true. Gotta have your foundation good and that's great, then everything else will work, too. Right. For me, technology should be invisible where everything should work, everything runs really smoothly, but it's so disruptive when the tech breaks down, the teacher's laptop crashes, and we're waiting for it to reboot so that they can share their slides with the students.

And it'd be such a time saver when things work Yeah. So I think what's important to think or to start with is that there's gotta be a foundation, and most schools have a pretty solid foundation, but there's a handful of things that might be lingering You got to take care of those things that are lingering and get shored up.

Saving money at one point might end up being a bigger problem later. So making sure that you take care of all those things that being the infrastructure. You can buy 1,000 more devices, but maybe the internet doesn't work. Whatever that problem is for the school, you want to handle that one first and get back to that basics.

But once we have that set line for basics, the things that we want to consider is that most devices, most things in the building are going to last between 8 and 10 years, and you want to be able to replace them on a cycle. And so you were talking about how you're being reactionary. Well, if we can be- Proactive

proactive, right, then we can make the most out of those things. So if we're thinking about, and I like to push for a 10-year cycle. Let's just try to keep things moving for 10 years. 10 years will allow you to get through all of the classrooms' devices, all of the things in the building on schedule, and you can refresh as needed with the little few things here and there.

But you're able to have those big purchases set out ahead of time, and it's not such a big deal. So let's dive into that. Definitely. Let's start with devices. You have to look at the personality of the school how teachers teach and dispel instruction. Are you a one-to-one school? Are there shared devices?

So you have to take a look at what's needed. I know a lot of times people or schools just choose Oh Chromebooks seem popular" or, "We have to have iPads." But check out the personality of your teachers. Like, how do they teach? Would iPads be more helpful? And each school has their own model.

Sometimes we'll-- there's a few of our schools have iPad only. Mm-hmm. Some of our schools have Chromebook only. Mm-hmm. So that's the first thing to look at. Yeah, I would say that there's oftentimes the principals are making decisions based on what somebody else is doing, and, Oh, definitely

You gotta-- for some cases, yes, you gotta look outside your own walls, but at first figure out what's going on inside and if the spending of that money towards that device would be great. So like you said, if it's an iPad or a Chromebook one of those things is gonna be a good fit, and the other thing might be less of a fit.

But if you throw money at the wrong one, then you're hitting yourself later for making that mistake. So ideally we're gonna figure out what that culture of the school is and which device is gonna make sense. I know typically we push K to 2 for iPads and 3 through 8 for Chromebooks just for the sake of the kind of work that teachers generally do, but that's not necessarily true for all schools.

And especially iPads can be very powerful for the middle school, and Chromebooks can be easily as good for the little ones. So it's not a hard and fast rule, but w- those are the kinds of things that we try to help people figure out. What's gonna be best for your students, for your teachers?

So what do you recommend in terms of re- refresh cycles for students? The thing that we love to do is If you think about that 10-year cycle, eight to 10-year cycle, and you think about maybe even you're thinking about your K to 8 school, and you've got nine years of kids to go through, we like to give kindergartners devices and have those devices follow all the way through until they're eighth grade.

Now, whether they take them with them or not, that's another story. But if that's the life cycle of the device that perfectly follows the life cycle of the student- Mm-hmm ... then that's a great way to do it, and that way you can make sure that you're constantly on time with your refreshing, and- Mm-hmm

the right amount of devices are happening every year. So you're not buying-- You're not spending 100 grand on devices in one year and then waiting 10 years on another 100 grand. You're doing- Right ... small pieces at a time. Now, if you don't have the same device all the way through, then maybe K through 2 cycles through three times before you buy something new.

Maybe 3 through 8 you buy at third grade, and that's the cycle. When the eighth graders leave, they have the ones that are still in good shape, you keep as extras for fillers. So there's lots of ways to do it, but that's generally what I like to do. Kid comes into kindergarten, we give them a device.

When they leave in eighth grade, that device, they've had that whole device with them the whole time. Label them, that way it's easy to follow. You can figure out if the kids have been taking care of them or not, and you can- ... be sure that your life cycle is on schedule. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I definitely like the lower grade versus upper grade model, where K to 2 share an iPad, and then 3 through 8, I like them having something like a Chromebook because they start using Google Classroom, and more typing is involved because it's generally pretty difficult to type on an iPad, even with the keyboard case.

So I like to start with new Chromebooks in third grade and have them carry that through eighth grade, as opposed to start from kindergarten and carry it to eighth grade, because by the time they get to eighth grade, they're most likely gonna use their devices more often than a third grader, and those devices are old.

Another model could be start with new devices in sixth grade. So- Mm-hmm ... sixth, seventh, eighth grade, they'll still have pretty good devices at the end. You don't want them to be struggling in eighth grade where they're doing more presentations, more writing, more research, as opposed to third graders.

They're like, "Oh, well I'm just gonna go log into Raz-Kids," or something like that, where it's not as intensive in terms of research, typing, and whatnot. That brings up two good points. I think, one a lot of folks will think, "Well, the eighth graders deserve the best thing in the school," so they'll buy new devices, and they'll give them to eighth graders, and the eighth graders might trash them faster than the third graders will.

Oh, for sure. Right? So that's where we like to put them at the bottom. And they're gonna last. They're not gonna be old devices. They're not gonna be bad devices by the time they get to the end of a cycle. Both Google and Apple have made a commitment to keeping devices around long enough for this to happen.

So I really wanna stress, whether you do that in third grade or sixth grade or even back to kindergarten- Mm-hmm ... let the devices run through their cycle Don't chase the new thing and give it to the older kids who will trash them faster. I think that's super important. I think the other thing to remember is now we're talking about a one-to-one situation for schools, and that's obviously everybody would love to have that, but it doesn't mean that's the only model.

So what we're talking about works even if you're doing shared carts, you only have three carts in the school, you got one cart in the school, whatever it might be. This cycle that we're talking about is still the same. So if you wanna-- if you only have one cart or two carts, you're still gonna follow that kind of ten-year cycle, nine-year cycle, so that you can make sure they're refreshed.

Just it becomes a little bit more important to make sure that you get those things separated so you're not having to do two carts every ten years. Oh, speaking of trash devices, I totally agree with you. For the eighth graders, not to say they're all like that, but there's a tendency to where students don't take good care of them if you give them brand-new devices on the last year.

So what happened when I had a choice, I actually went BYOD, or the students brought their own iPads, because we did experience a lot of iPads breaking, parents were getting upset, and I'm like, "Well, if students brought their own devices, and it's not because of a budgetary reason on the school's part, it's because students will take much better care of the device if it's their own, and it's up to them or their families to replace the glass or the screens on an iPad or device when they break it."

So it comes from two sides. The parents will be like, "Hey, take care of this," as opposed to the school device, the parent might not look at it if it, especially if it stays at school. So that's the way I went. And it does save the school a lot of money. So if you're concerned about costs or it is very cost prohibitive, and you don't have it in the budget, you can go in terms of bring your own device.

And we started in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, and we had shared carts for K to five. Mm-hmm. And the older kids still use the shared carts because we had MacBooks Yeah, I like that model. I mean, that, that works in some situations where you can make that work. I think the flip side of that, or play devil's advocate to it, is that when you have kids bring in their own devices, you have less of a management over them.

So you have to kind of... You have your trade-offs. Yes. You're saving costs, but you're also-- you're giving away some of that power, and that power is not necessarily a bad thing- Mm-hmm ... if your faculty is strong and able to manage that in the classroom, and then you don't have a lot of issues in regards to what kids are doing on their own devices.

But that's one of those trade-offs. I think it's important also to-- we've already mentioned a couple models here, right? So we've got- Mm-hmm ... The school has a one-to-one deal, right? Where there's the school owns all the devices. We've got the school has a few carts. We've got the BYOD, and what we've kind of set that together is that the school is either paying for this or the parents are paying for it.

And one other model that we'll probably talk about in another episode when we talk about just refreshing in general. Mm-hmm. A third way to deal with this cost thing is most schools have a technology fee. That technology fee helps to pay for things. Well we've kind of refined this over the years, and we've kind of worked this out to, for $75 per family, now whatever your tech fee needs to be, that's fine, but just- Right

in terms of the devices for the students, we figured out that for $75 you can insure the device. So whether you actually go out and get an insurance policy or you're just paying for the repairs of your current devices, in that $75 you can insure a device, and you can purchase your new fleet that same year together for a total of $75, and that can be paid for by the families through that technology fee.

So this is not now we have to go fundraise for this, but this is just part- Of course ... of the budget. The parents are paying for it, the school is buying it and controlling it, but it's a very cost-effective way to do it, and this is all about being proactive because if you're proactive $75 is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it's really hard to get folks to pony up for the next fundraiser.

Oh, we need to come up with 36,000 to buy a bunch of new stuff." Oh. It's like, " no. That's already in the tech fee. That's done. That's part of business. That's a regular deal." So that's one of those things we'll talk about maybe in a future episode, but I think it's very important to understand that you can purchase repair, and protect all of your devices with a new fleet of devices, one classroom set every year, for that $75.

And that could be any school, because whether you're a school that's flush with money and the $75 is no biggie- Mm-hmm ... maybe that doesn't hurt the parents, or you're a poor school and you're trying to come up with $75 per family, $75 can be very easily fundraised. That would be the case. So that's something to think about, and we'll have probably a little bit more about that maybe in the show notes.

But I just wanted to share that other model because it doesn't necessarily have to be all on the school, or if it's gonna be on the parents, that you have to give up control. Oh, that's a great idea, because $75 is pretty reasonable to get a whole device for a student. And even if they started that specific fee, that $75 fee in third grade, you have that carried over six year, and it pays for the device.

So just breaking it down makes it easier. I know for when I had sixth through eighth, the bring your own device, for those families who didn't want to, or maybe they couldn't have afford to purchase a brand-new iPad, because iPads are pretty expensive, like $500, I created like a tech fee. It was like 150 for the three years.

So they can-- So they're renting or they're leasing. And by the third year, hey, it pays for the iPad itself. It equals- Yeah ... the cost. And then I have a buyout fee if they wanna keep it. So a lot of times parents did buy it out. They just paid I forget how much it was, maybe it was like $100. It pays for the rest of that iPad.

Yeah, that's a great model to help people break it down and not make it such a enormous cost for the school and for parents. Question for you about teachers. How often do we refresh teacher devices? Now, that's a good question. Oftentimes we can follow that same schedule. Mm-hmm. I know that typically my first schools especially, we're really trying to get the most out of those devices.

Oh. I mean, we had devices like that we rebuilt several times, 15-year-old devices that were still humming because we rebuilt them. It's a lot harder to rebuild devices now, Mm-hmm ... because they've taken away the ability to swap out parts. Mm-hmm. But you can still get a lot of mileage out of it. So I would push for a similar cycle.

So if you have a 10 years, that's K through eight and faculty, right? So that becomes your 10th year or 10th cycle. But if you can do that in half as much time, so if you can refresh faculty every five years, and that's kind of something needs to go. What I think is more important about the faculty refresh, it's not so much that it needs to be new, but that it needs to be the right fit.

So do you need a lot of space? Do you need to be super fast? Do you need to connect to a thousand things in your classroom? So I think about thinking what is gonna be best for the teachers, and then buying that right the first time- Mm-hmm ... will probably allow you to get 10 years out of your devices versus five.

But if you can refresh, let's say you've got 20 of those devices, it's less than a classroom set, you can do those every five years, and that's a nice thing. And that might be something that you run the pizza lunch for or whatever, right? I rolled old faculty laptops into a student set, so that's how I did.

Like you said, back in the days, we could swap parts. I had 2012 MacBook Pros last through COVID. We went through COVID, so that was, like, a good seven to eight-year-old laptop that worked, and then we didn't get new laptops till 2020. So yeah, and the whole thing is that technology changes so often, and Apple doesn't make it easy for us to swap out parts just to upgrade them now.

So- Mm-hmm ... yeah, and eight to 10 years for a teacher laptop, kind of long, so I agree with you with the five-year plan. I don't feel like teachers want new computers all the time, because then- No ... they always feel like it's a hassle for you to transfer all their stuff. Mm-hmm. Are they gonna lose all their documents and whatnot?

I do like it when the school pushes towards a more online model as opposed to just using Microsoft Office, and if they have everything in Google Drive, then the teachers won't lose their documents. Or if they something happens to their computer, it crashes or the computer dies, all their documents can be transferred instantly just by logging into their Google account.

So there's something to keep in mind is just push for that. I'm I know a large percentage of our computers, not just teacher computers, aren't backed up. So it's the data. It's all the time put into putting together all those lesson plans and documents and slides or whatnot. That stuff is gold. And to lose- Yeah

it when the computer dies, it's so tragic. You have to rebuild all that stuff Yeah, and that's, I mean, definitely a point for using a device that is fully synced with one of those online services. Whether you're a Microsoft school or a Google school, you should be taking advantage of the online storage to store most of your stuff.

Right. I think what's changed over the years is because of that, you often can give a teacher a laptop and throw on a browser- Mm-hmm ... and they're ready to go, right? And so you don't need to worry about Microsoft licensing. You don't need to worry about licensing for a lot of things. You just need those accounts.

And at one point there were I don't think this is the case anymore, but for a while there was like ASUS was making a computer that was as beautiful and as fast as a MacBook. Oh, yes. And so it was like, "Why don't we just give those to teachers?" 'Cause really all they want is to be able to get online, and they wanna be able to show their stuff- Mm-hmm

on the screen. And so if you can do that both with a Chromebook, then that's great. I think that's gotten clunky over the years, and so you having a cheaper device like that makes folks feel Like second class, if you will. But having a device that's fast enough and they can get access to the web is probably all you really need.

I think the two main things you need to look for is can you screen mirror? Will it project to the ... Can you send the signal to the projector without wires? And also printing, 'cause I know that you can print from a Chromebook, but there are more challenges. It's not just as simple as just installing a driver.

A lot of times it works seamlessly, but I feel like there's, there are more issues in terms of printing on a Chromebook. I think that's why most teachers like to use a MacBook, just because of AirPlay and also just printing. Yeah. I think one of my, one of my favorite hacks of the years of past was to attach a Chromebook to the projector, the TV, whatever it was- Mm-hmm

a smart board, and the teachers could just sign in- Oh, yes ... to their account, and they've got whatever they have on the board. But that doesn't affect their teacher device, so they could- Mm-hmm ... still be doing things managing the classroom, or these days everybody's watching the kids' screens apparently.

But you could have that document up on that screen, and it wasn't tied to your laptop. And so that's a workflow thing because some people just rather share what's on my screen, and other people wanna be able to pull up something separate, and they can still look at things on their own.

So, but that's it's very cool when you can just plug in an HDMI cord into a Chromebook and then move on with your life. Oh, we should get the Mac Minis now. They're, like, $500, and it's a full Apple experience. Yeah. Yeah. If you could do a sidecar thing with that, I think that's cool. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. But it, regardless of whatever device you choose, I think it's one of those hacks is either have a shared document between the devices or be able to log into your account on that other device, and you could have a nice easy sharing experience without having to worry about, am I logging in here who's got my device?

You can pull that stuff up on any, any device, so. But yeah, the Mac Minis are pretty cool. I might get one of those myself. So speaking of other devices, projectors, Apple TV, document cameras, carts, how often do those need to be updated? Well, I think the projectors are the one thing that doesn't follow our rule perfectly.

We were just in a school a week or so ago, and they have projectors that are 15 years old, and they're still going. Oh. So it is possible. The manufacturers will tell you get five years. Once again, I would push to get 10 years out of those devices. So- Oh, definitely ... in most cases, we can follow that eight to 10 year rule.

But yeah, the projector and the TV I think are those things that are going to be on that shorter cycle. Apple TVs will last forever. Your doc camera will probably last forever. Although those are very inexpensive, so less of an issue to swap out. And I think carts. Carts are really just a box with power strips in them.

So you can keep that- That's what I did ... you can keep that box forever, and you can swap out the power supplies. Even on the fancy ones, the power supplies are replaceable, so your cart should last you forever even if you have to spend $100 on new power strips. Oh, yeah. So those are good also. Things that people take for granted, does the TV turn on or does the projector turn on?

Those projectors are pretty expensive. I know we replaced a few. It was close to, how much, $2,000, $2,500 to replace. Then thinking about the cost of bulbs, and a lot of the newer projectors just have laser. You can't even replace the, the bulbs themselves. So- Mm-hmm ... Something to consider. I know a few of the schools moved from projectors to TV just because the TVs are brighter.

They have a shorter warm-up time. Mm-hmm. The image is not gonna be as large, but they seem more reliable than the projectors and less maintenance. Yeah, and typically a lot more clear. Mm-hmm. If you think about the cost of projectors in general, a simple projector you can probably get in the 5 to 750 range.

An interactive projector is gonna be much more like that $2,000 one. So depending on what you're really after, and that, I think that's also surveying the teachers. I worked in a school where they have SMART Boards in every room, and as it came time to refresh them, most people are just showing images. Oh, no.

No one's touching the SMART Board anymore. No. So to go and spend $5,000 on touching a SMART Board versus spending maybe $1,000 on a nicer TV- Oh, yes ... Would be a lot better use of that money. Moving on to non-devices, subscriptions. What are some subscription items that are, you definitely should have?

Well, I think that, that comes back down to your classroom situation, too. We can't speak to the educational software that you might have to pay for, but that should be a simple line item thing. I try to push people, although the world is moving towards subscriptions- Mm-hmm ... we try to help people get out of subscriptions, and that's what another reason why you, for your devices, you may not wanna be on a Microsoft world, 'cause eventually you'll be paying for it over and over again.

But at any time that you can get off a subscription and use something that is already part of the suite that you're working with, then that, that's great. So you obviously have the learning stuff that you have to pay for. There's management fees for the devices, and I think that's so important, whether you're managing the tech yourself or if you have a consultant outside group who's managing the tech, it's so important to have essentially managed And the cost for such things are usually very inexpensive.

Mm-hmm. For Chromebooks, it's all built into the system, so you pay a one-time license with the Chromebook, 38 bucks at this point. And for iPads like Mosel is our preferred management device tool, and it's 550 a year per device, which is typically nothing. It's like, breaks down to 50 cents a month per device.

It's really reasonable. That's super important. I think the other things that you have to worry about in terms of subscriptions are if you're paying for fancy firewalls or web filters. Mm-hmm. Those things are gonna be big. And any sort of consumables that come along with that, you should just have built in for your budget.

Usually consumables, 1,000 bucks a year, 1,500 bucks a year for those things that'll break or that need to be replaced often. But those are kind of the major ones that I think. What do you think? When I was managing our BYOD iPads, I did have a m- management software. W- I used Meraki. It was free at the time, and it was great because I was grandfathered in.

But just keep in mind, the free version doesn't do everything. Students were able to remove that management app from their iPads. I would always know because they're like, "Oh, I don't have Wi-Fi," because you took the Meraki app off Mm-hmm ... You instantly lose Wi-Fi. So there are free options for Mosel, but I definitely wanna push for the paid version- Mm-hmm

because it just works so much better in terms of supervision and whatnot. And there becomes holes when you don't use the paid version. Of course, the free version is good, especially to just get started to see if it will work or if you like the app itself. But definitely a paid version at 550, or whatever it costs, it seems pretty minimal compared to what you get.

Filters, I believe there's free versions of filters for the web. But you definitely need to make sure that you get one that's robust, because think about the time you have to spend when a student goes onto an inappropriate website. Then you have to deal with parents and the fallout, and it's just so much, and it becomes a big thing.

But when you do have web filters or, and become CIPA compliant, you make sure that the kids are protected, they're going on websites. And a lot of times, the kids aren't doing things on purpose, or they're just playing around and going on gaming websites. So you do have more control in that sense. I think that's the key is the control.

Mm-hmm. The f- the free filters there's a bunch out there. CleanBrowsing has one. Mm-hmm. But you have zero control over it. Right. And so you really, if you're gonna go free, you really have to make sure your firewall is doing majority of that work. But if you pay for a service, then you have a lot of control, then you can take a little bit more ownership for that.

And I think we're now seeing the deal where you go a step further, and it's like, well, not only do we have a filter, but now we have You know, some sort of full management software that is- Right ... keeping tabs on things, recording what people are visiting, and blocking them from participating in things that they shouldn't.

And so those things like Hapara and GoGuardian are big and costly, but you are also, you're getting more for what you're paying for. Right. And you don't have to have GoGuardian or a lot of those paid individual student monitoring services, but you should at least have a good filter, because the free filters, they'll block just a general category.

Where I get a lot of requests from principals, they're like, "Oh, can you block this website? Can you block this?" And websites pop up all the time, or the, or our students find a lot of gaming websites all the time. If it's not one thing, it's another. So we can't keep blocking individual websites.

So the paid filters definitely help in terms of that, and it definitely saves in terms of interruptions in the classrooms. It helps the teachers out a lot, where they're not constantly just sneaking up on kids or checking on kids Hey, what are you doing?" When they set up an assignment or ask students to start on an assignment, they don't have to be worried Oh, are they playing on this?

Are they doing their work?" At least the filters are there, and it blocks out a lot of distractions. Yeah that's the definitely the bare minimum. I think the, the other extreme is folks are loading up. They've got the filter, they've got the fancy firewall. Mm-hmm. They're paying for the maximum security services.

They've got something like GoGuardian in there, and they're wondering how the kids can still possibly do anything bad, and Right ... or off topic. And I think it's also those are all great tools. Nothing is bulletproof. Kids will find their way around things if it's not fully locked down.

But regardless, to some degree, it's the kids' job to try to figure that out- Right ... and it's our job to try to prevent it. But really we can't forget that classroom management, the the engagement piece of what are the kids working on? Do they have free time? Or not, maybe not free time.

For sure. Yeah, but are there unsupervised in some way that allows them to think, "Hey, now's a great time for me to go and check out and see if I can find this gaming website." if- Right ... if we're not setting up those options for them, then they're they might be figuring those things out at home, but at least they're not happening- during science class. But we can have a whole episode on this, like another podcast episode. So all this talk about filtering and whatnot, that's all part of infrastructures, everything that's invisible. It's the tools and the equipment that make these things happen. What are some items in terms of infrastructure that is the bare minimum or the must-haves?

Well and just y- one way to solve the whole kids online messing around is just shut down your internet. Get bad internet. So if your internet's slow, then the kids won't be on there. Oh, yes. No, seriously, though the internet's the one thing that I think is invisible until it doesn't work, and it's also the thing that can never be good enough.

Right. We could put in internet that's gig gigabit internet, and it can be as fast as lightning, and people will still say it's so slow. Right. So it that's... You're never gonna win there, but when it goes down you're very frustrated by the fact that all these cool online tools that you were trying to use are no longer available.

Our student information system's not available anymore, all these things. Mm-hmm. So there's-- You've got to make sure you take care of that. Also, I think for bang for your buck, we often will talk up to principals about upgrading their internet service, and you're like, "For $1,200 a year more- Mm-hmm ... I could solve one of the biggest problems you have."

And for 1,200 bucks, that's nothing, right? And you're like, "Oh, you should upgrade your internet." They're like, "Oh, no, we can't do that." And it's like, " wait." Right. "It's only $1,200, and you'll get fast internet." oh my gosh. So yeah, starting there number one What do you have coming into the building?

Mm-hmm. 'Cause it doesn't matter how, what you have in the building if what's coming into the building's not fast enough. So I think we've talked about this in the past, but right now we're kind of in the it used to be that you could do 100 down, and it was like 15 or 20 up, and we had buildings, schools that had 800 devices working fine off of that.

Right. So if what's inside is built well and what's coming in at 100 is fine, that's great. The pandemic taught us that we needed more because of the uploads, and so everybody's increased that. So most schools are sitting at the 300 down with 30 up. If you're dealing with coax Comcast, Spectrum, whatever it might be, that's kind of like the base level.

If you've got fiber in your area and you can get gigabit- Right ... both ways, then that's great. And there's lots of other things in between, but definitely having at least that 100 down. If you're in a real rural area and you don't have access to great internet, that 100 is where you wanna-- that's your basis.

But if you can start off at 300 and really start getting your upload speed to be closer to your download speed would be the key. So good internet coming in, you wanna have a good firewall that's at least keeping the bad guys out and hopefully helping you filter. Mm-hmm. And then everything inside needs to be built well, that it can handle all of the speed that you're getting.

So without going into too much detail, if you're paying for 300 from Comcast, 300 down, and your devices are seeing 60, you've got something in the chain there that needs to be corrected. And when you correct that chain, those devices can see it. For the schools that do have gigabit speed- Mm-hmm ... your devices aren't seeing gigabit because nobody's devices can see- Right

gigabit yet. But what you've done is you're taking a freeway that used to be three lanes, and now it's like an eight-lane freeway. Mm-hmm. So there's lots less that there's gonna be a backup. And so that's kind of, we always think about the highway when we think about internet. So making sure you have enough internet coming in, and that all the devices, all of your switches, your firewalls, everything else can talk to each other at the fastest possible speed inside the building, would really make sure that's good.

I usually check in with my, We had Comcast, so I usually just shoot an email. I put it in my calendar item check in with my Comcast rep and say, "Hey, what's the cost of all the different plans?" how much does it cost for 100? What's my current plan?" how much am I paying?" And a lot of times- I could pay the same but for faster speeds."

They're like, " we might have 100 down for $250." And then the following year, it's still $250, but it's 300 now. So you can upgrade with that. I have to say it's quite of a hassle to keep following up with them because of customer service issues, but it's well worth it. And I know a lot of our schools where we did upgrade the plans are it is a hassle to keep contacting their customer service, but even maybe to even do it on a two-year cycle, you could save a lot of money.

Or have ... Let's just say if you're really fast service already, you might have the 500 down or the gigabit service. It's actually cheaper now. You could save the school $100. That could be spent elsewhere. So yeah, it's a simple little check, sending an email, giving them a call. It's a hassle, but you'll s- save the school a lot of money.

One or the other you'll get ... Either you'll get a faster service for the same price- Mm-hmm ... or you'll get the same service for a less, a cheaper price. Oh, right. That's exactly it. So I just do that on a annual basis. Just put January 1st, that's a thing to do. And something to keep in mind, and you talked about this earlier, is you can have gigabit service, but then everything inside is slow, then it's almost pointless.

Or you buy teachers new laptops every three years, but your service is slow, your internet service coming in is slow, then your- Doesn't matter ... there's like a bottleneck. Yeah. The other thing that people don't realize is that your internet inside your building will run At the speed of the slowest thing.

Oh, right. So if you have one room that you never upgraded, and you've got some old equipment in there, maybe an old piece of Wi-Fi infrastructure or a switch is slower in one area, the whole network feels that drain. Mm-hmm. And so the-- If you take care of all those little pieces, and most of the time there's not many pieces in the building we're talking about less than 10 devices out of your total device package- Mm-hmm

are sitting in your building that are controlling this internet, the, one of those being slow really hampers everything. So making sure that you've got that full speed going through gigabit devices all the way through is so important, and that's something that, you know, obviously you don't know and necessarily have to go out and spend and get a consultant to come and check those things out.

But that's something you can pull serial numbers for look at model numbers, and then look up and see if what the specs are. Do all these things matter? But one good check, I mean, spending a couple hundred bucks to have somebody come and run a check on the whole system for you, it would be so worth it.

'Cause if you've got a bottleneck somewhere and you don't find it, it can be really be troublesome. Especially- Yeah ... you see it now during testing when everyone's trying to do something, and all of a sudden it's not the, it's not the oops error you're getting- Right ... but you're getting a load error, then that's a problem.

And from a teacher's perspective, I know a lot of teachers have told me like, "Oh, we have half the class test first and then have the other half of the class test." I'm like How painful is that, right? Yeah. It's such a waste of time for the kids and for the teachers, and just having to rearrange their whole schedule and make lesson plans and just split the class.

Sometimes you have to do that, but there's a lot of things you c- we can do so that we can help teachers and save time, and just have everyone test at the same time. Or I know when we first did STAR testing Oh, let's schedule it so not all the classes test at the same time," right? Hey, first and second grade on Monday at this time."

So those are things where just upgrading or making sure your equipment is good or up to date can help everyone. Yeah. So just little things. What's your recommendation for refreshing those devices, the network devices? So I think it-- Once again if you built it right, you can follow that same policy of every eight to 10 years.

Mm-hmm. The nice thing is if you built a system that is modular, so we tend to put in unified networks in a lot of places. You can swap out piece by piece- Mm-hmm ... Over time. So you might get that eight to 10 years, but then you don't need to swap out the whole kit and caboodle in one shot.

You can place replace one piece at a time, and the system keeps going. So that's being smart about things. Oftentimes, folks get stuck into subscriptions, where the subscription, the network stuff dies if the subscription's not there, whatever it might be. There's smart ways about building that, and so that way you're not stuck in that big cycle.

But once again, eight to 10 years for your network is probably about that time. Your firewall will probably be the thing that you're gonna look at far more often. Mm-hmm. That's typically on a three-year cycle if you're using one of the bigger companies because of The licensing and the threat protection, whatever needs to be upgraded, or they're just building you new boxes, so you have to buy a new one.

Oh. So you might change that out more often. But one key thing to think about is that you don't necessarily have to go and get the brand-new fastest and the brightest right out of the box because chances are your devices your Chromebooks, your iPads can't see that speed yet, and there's gonna be a version two and version three coming out that will be a whole lot better.

So be cautious about that, and you don't necessarily have to spend a ton of money. But try to build a system that is modular so you don't have to replace it all at once. Oh, yeah. So we talked about all the nice brand-new things, but there's two things that or two groups of people that we need to look at are who are your tech support or who's supporting all this tech in your building, and also teacher training.

That's really important. We can give teachers, like, all these new devices, all these new great tools. If they don't know how to use it or they don't know it exists, then it's pretty... It's not a good way to spend your money. Yeah. Yeah, definitely so It's so important to to stay on top of these things. And a lot of times we come in and we've-- we're just dealing with deferred maintenance- Mm-hmm

because it's easy to forget about these things that are invisible. The internet just works, and so we don't touch it, and so life is beautiful. But it's also you'll have that deferred maintenance, but you're also dealing with deferred knowledge. Mm-hmm. And what might have been true and good five years ago is no longer true and good.

So having somebody, even if you have somebody on staff who can-- who manages this for you, having somebody on the outside who can be that go-to person when it gets above your pay grade. And for-- if you're a principal, most of the principals have not come from a tech background, so putting on that- Right

technology coordinator or director hat is not needed. You've got so many more things to worry about. So I think it's always important to have some- either someone or a group that you can turn to on the outside to ask Are we in the right, right direction?" And if you can have somebody on staff, even better.

If you can afford to have somebody on staff, then that's wonderful. But at the very least, you're gonna wanna have somebody who you can turn to when things get really bad. You think about if you had a serious power outage and everything in that network closet went down- Mm-hmm ... who's the person you're gonna call to come and revive that, to rebuild it?

Right. Does anybody on your campus know how that stuff gets put together? Mm-hmm. Can anybody on your campus figure that out if it happened? And that's not to scare anybody, but it's just the idea that we always wanna have... If we had a plumbing problem- Mm-hmm ... most of us aren't searching for a plumber.

Right. We have somebody that we'll at least call in those emergencies. Same thing with the electrician. It's the same idea with your tech. If you have somebody on site who knows those answers, kudos to you, 'cause that's awesome. But more-- as we go along further, most people don't have the budget to have somebody on site.

So having somebody to call in that kind of situation where everything gets fried, that's a huge deal to know that you have somebody, you can phone a friend- Mm-hmm ... you can call somebody in an emergency, and you can still get help, so. I know some folks who are pretty good at that if you're looking.

Not just saying anything but no, it's important to have your triage for anything really. You really wanna have who on site can handle that and who's offsite, who's the first person I can call in an emergency? And so that's something you really wanna look at. And that could be part of your budget.

Their participation in your school might be a part-time thing, it might be a one-off thing, maybe it's a twice a semester. Mm-hmm. Maybe it's every month. Maybe it's every, every week. But you wanna bill then whatever extra help you're gonna need, and put that into your budget as well.

Oh, for sure. I know when I first started my tech coordinator position, I didn't know a lot about networking. I didn't know anything about networking. So we did have a parent who helped in terms of upgrading our network or, and I reached out to Apple and whatnot, and like I know way more about networks now than, than I did 10 years ago.

But to know, I think a lot of schools might even have a parent volunteer, but keep in mind that parent and their child graduates from the school. And make sure that knowledge or the infrastructure and documentation is there. So make sure you do have a go-to person. And secondly, I know this is a sad way to put it, but as we're dealing with this in one of our, in one of our locations- Mm-hmm

it's not just that you wanna have the information in the school, but you need more than one person in the school- Oh, for sure ... to have that information. We had the unfortunate situation of somebody passing away, and all of their knowledge and their, Oh, yes ... passwords go with them. And so nobody else has that information because they fly solo, and there's no backup of that.

So without getting into further detail about these things- Mm-hmm ... you wanna have your backups, you wanna have, if you have somebody from the outside, that's great. But have at least two people on the inside who have that information, who can share that information, and ideally if none of... this never, ever happens where you need to worry about an emergency, but there's more than one person who can help you.

For sure. So before you buy anything, make sure you have a person that could support it, especially when it comes to like purchasing devices. Again we can get the teachers and students all new devices, but if they don't know its capabilities or they don't know how to use it or what's available you wait two or three years, that device is old already.

And sometimes I see devices, like brand-new devices sit in the closet, and I'm like, "This is two years old. It was $1,000 back in its day," or it was pretty expensive. Now it's old tech. So that's kind of a frustration where it's like, oh, yay, we finally got the funds to purchase this set of Chromebooks or set of iPads, but they're just sitting in a cart, and no one knows how to use them.

So just keep in mind, just have the PDs or whatever then service. Could just be like a quick 30 minutes during a faculty meeting or an hour on a half day just to talk about, like, how are we using them before we even purchase it. So if you get that buy-in, it's so true, it's so much better. I think the failure of tech in schools has long been There's more stuff.

People just keep throwing money at stuff. Mm-hmm. And it never gets used to its full capacity, or in some cases, at all. And I think that the public schools have a little bit more of the issue of if you don't use it, you lose it, in terms of the budget. Oh, yes. The Catholic schools shouldn't have that issue.

That, that budget is set internally. Obviously there's some people involved, but it's not that you're gonna lose that budget if you don't use it. So you just wanna make sure that you're starting with, what are we gonna do? What do we really need? I know this is gonna sound crazy coming from a company that specializes in

selling, repairing, you know- Right ... managing tech, but you typically need less than you think. Yes ... and so start from there and build the need. Build the need for more, and then when that becomes a, a real need those dollars will make will stretch a lot further. All righty. So what are some final thoughts?

What are, like, the main things we should w- hit on or we should focus on whenever we build a tech budget? Well I wanna stress, the most important thing, and the reason why we're doing this episode is that, number one, you actually have a tech budget. That tech budget might be one line item in your overall budget, but you should not be surprised- Mm-hmm

by the costs that are a part of the deal. Secondly, I think it's so important to be proactive. It costs a lot less money to come up with a refresh cycle and follow that cycle, and stick to that cycle, than it does to constantly have these fundraisers for big purchases. And I think parents get tired of it, too.

Mm-hmm. If every year you're having a fundraiser and you're like, "Oh, this is for our wonderful technology," and then they don't see any use of that- Cover it ... or they don't get to see it, then you're losing there. Now you could say, "One fundraiser is dedicated to our constant refreshing of technology," and that's all wonderful, but- Mm-hmm

it's really important to be proactive about that versus reactive. You'll save a ton of money. You'll get more years out of your things if you're taking care of them, and you'll spend a whole lot less. So in this case, being proactive will save you money. It'll save you time. And that's really what I really wanna stress.

So putting this tech budget together is all about how do we systematize Our spending, our use, e- everything to make this better. 'Cause ultimately, we're trying to help the kids to learn, and so let's not waste money on things that aren't working or throwing money away. Right. I would say be proactive so we're not constantly putting out fires and there's not panic all the time.

Then every... It's so stressful when teachers say, "Oh, my kids can't do testing, they can't log into Google Classroom," and whatnot. It's instead of putting out fires constantly, just have tech seamless. Things work. Isn't that... It'd be so great, teachers can take attendance. Simple things.

Simple. Not a lot to ask. It's the bare minimum. But if you liked this episode, check out... And I know w- we got kind of technical here. In the show notes, we'll put a list together and a tech budget template, so check that out. Yeah. Be sure, definitely be sure to check out that stuff. I think it's it's good to see what might be possible, and our template is obviously not the, the golden goose of tech budgets, but it may help you if you don't have something now to think about what are all the things that we spend our money on.

And your accountant, your bookkeeper should be able to pull you a list of things that you can start to organize and realize, oh, that's where we're spending money. And just like the commercials say, maybe there's a subscription we can get rid of. You know- Oh, yes ... let's cancel it. So if you liked this episode, also check out our episode on, we had a one on a tech checklist and fundraising.

Yes, 'cause those are things we'll do. The tech checklist will make sure that you've taken care of all those things that should be on your tech budget. Right. And then the fundraising so that you can raise more money to buy more cool things. All right. Well, thank you, Becky. Thanks for hanging out today and sharing all your knowledge on how to take care of the tech budget for schools.

It's always good to, to chat with you and figure out how to make this a little bit better. Thank you. Always happy to be welcomed back. All right. We'll see you in the next one. Okay, talk to you later. Bye.