Communications Committee

Current administrative resources dedicated to the area of information technology include ten percent of one full-time equivalent faculty position and an undetermined partial percentage of Scott’s time and effort. In and of itself, this is not enough of an allocation to generate the critical mass needed to realize required IT improvements. To help create the necessary momentum, it was proposed that the infrastructure group within the Communications Committee undertake the collaborative execution of an improvement plan under its current committee workplan. The following topics were discussed:

Establish a reliable and sustainable IT infrastructure and applications server platform.
Three measures should be considered immediately to minimize our exposure to and risk of critical systems loss.
 

1. Establish a threshold of acceptable system down-time and put in place a “Service Level Agreement” to confirm commitment and measure performance.  (In mission critical business applications acceptable down-time is usually less than 1/10 of one percent).
 

2. Establish a documented and detailed back-up and recovery plan with clear escalation procedures to ensure thresholds are met.
 

3. Assess the alternatives of securing expertise and supporting IT infrastructure in-house, with on-call resources, off-site hosting, or a combination thereof, and establish the relationships and measures necessary to implement an appropriate proactive back-up and recovery plan.. This should include an assessment of our current server and network configurations.
 

Implement a well-suited Student Information (& Performance Management) System (SIS/SIPS)
Our current application (Pearson Centerpoint) will no longer be supported after July of 2008. We have a deadline of December 2006 to commit with Pearson to implement their replacement product (PowerSchool) by July 2007. This also creates a need and an opportunity to review other, perhaps better suited alternatives within these timeframes. A plan and calendar for evaluating WHS requirements and alternative product specifications needs to be developed immediately. Once a decision is made among the alternatives, and implementation plan needs to be developed. A well suited, well implemented application offers many opportunities for improvement over the current situation.
 

Develop New On-Line Community Resources
Many aspects and initiatives of administrative and overall school improvement are interrelated. Moving our web site to an external, hosted environment has enabled us to consider a broad range of new tools capable of improving productivity throughout administrative, committee, and community initiatives.. The consideration of new tools has an impact on the requirements and specifations we seek in our SIS/SIPS application. These tools are intended to enhance (not replace) the person-to-person interaction central to a Waldorf methods environment. Possibilities for consideration include:
- BLOGS for posting and organizing information ( Snippets, Community Council, Committees, Silent Auction, etc.)
- Discussion Forums for extended “conversation” of a variety of community topics (spin-off discussions from meetings)
- Structure Mailling Lists/Listerves)
- WIKIs (for collaborative community creation of resources like the Parent Handbook)
- On-line Portfolios, WHS Gallery, Web Store for generating funds
 

Tie Things Together in a Well-formed Overall Technology Plan
A comprehensive IT plan not only creates a road-map for progress, it also ties related and interdependent areas into the same picture and provides the key to generating opportunities and funds for further growth .The next state planning/funding  cycle needs to be identified and targeted for completion of our comprehensive plan. The initial outline should be completed now. As the plan develops it needs to fill the state mandated requirements for a well-formed plan This includes a number or considerations not currently targeted as critical priorities