Management

Don’t Lose Valuable IT Knowledge Amid K–12 Turnover

When tech leaders leave their positions, does your school have a plan in place to maintain the processes and information they were responsible for?

Janice D. Mertes

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Janice Mertes is the CDW state-level ambassador serving state departments and K–12 education. She has more than 30 years of experience in public education, including 20 years in a large suburban Wisconsin school district as a social studies teacher and technology leader. Janice serves as the CDW liaison for national educational technology organizations, including SETDA, the Consortium for School Networking, the Council of Chief State School Officers’ Education Information Management Advisory Collaborative CIO Network and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology.

Turnover in K–12 schools is creating to staff shortages and knowledge gaps throughout the industry. When individuals in IT leadership positions leave — whether because of burnout, retirement or taking a job in a higher-paying sector — they often take institutional knowledge with them. Every industry is facing tech shortages, and schools are competing against hospitals, industry, and local and state governments.

Like the extent of the impact, the solutions for this vary depending on the size and location of school districts. There is a difference between a large school that employs a cybersecurity specialist and a small school whose IT leader also works as a bus driver.

Here are some of the ways schools can maintain a knowledge base and ease the transition when someone in IT leadership leaves their role.

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The Value of Transparent, Inclusive Strategic Planning

Today’s K–12 leadership teams face additional complexities when it comes to strategic planning, which now includes considering technology across every facet of a district. It’s operational. It’s business. It’s finance. Superintendents need the technology and skills to respond quickly and clearly in a crisis. Instructional leaders might try evidence-based purchasing.

One way to build and maintain skills for K–12 leaders is through CoSN’s early career CTO clinic. It has strategic planning and support resources that can be leveraged in addition to network and community support.

A key way to retain information when someone leaves the organization is not to be person-dependent. If you’re building a strategic plan, involve others who know the information. Then, the knowledge, the plan and the understanding are spread across many people. Keep in mind that it’s vital to have transparency around what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

If you’ve invested in a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing, your district can survive the drain of losing a person. This approach ensures that a school is prepared for anything, even in the absence of a long-standing tech leader Leadership recognizes that the whole district is now a connected network of systems and operations, and cyberattacks can go through any of those systems and shut down the district. This underscores why leaders need certain skill sets, and why schools must invest in their training and support.

Bring In Managed Services Experts to Bridge Knowledge Gaps

Managed services are another great way to maintain institutional knowledge amid leadership turnover. How to use them is really a matter of cost-benefit analysis: You can use managed services to upskill and retrain people, or you can work with experts who can help you.

Private partners such as CDW are available to talk about this from a strategic planning, budgeting and ROI perspective. As you go into your strategic planning and budgeting cycles and look at your staffing models, CDW managed services can fill in gaps on your staff. CDW also can connect schools with other managed service providers or local managed service opportunities.

I don’t know many districts that have been able to create permanent chief privacy officer or security officer roles. Even the few states that formulated those positions have now had to cut them or realign them due to budget concerns. So now, employees must be able to grow skills in a different way.

This article is part of the ConnectIT: Bridging the Gap Between Education and Technology series.