1. Be Proactive
Asked how projected student population declines may affect support for educational technology funding, Adam Phyall III, director of professional learning and leadership at All4Ed, quoted longtime K–12 technology director Donna Williamson: “This train is coming, but we’ve got to get in front of it and call it a parade.”
“My first piece of advice for technology directors is to get ahead of this,” Phyall says. “Enrollments are tightening, and the national viewpoint on edtech and technology is in flux right now. To be able to read that and act proactively rather than reactively on deployment of our devices and related needs, we have to lead with our kids.”
2. Tie Technology Tightly to Student Success
“If projects aren’t directly tied to our achievements or student success, then we can put them on the chopping block,” Phyall adds. “If we do need it, then we have to look at tightening the budgets on the things that sit furthest away from student achievement and success.”
Time-strapped teams can turn to artificial intelligence (AI) to quickly make sense of the numbers, Phyall also advises, and gain a better understanding of which tools are working and how they can be tied directly to student outcomes.
“We need to be able to tell the story of what we’re doing with what we have, and how detrimental budget cuts would be to our efficiency,” he says. “I never told my superintendent, ‘No, we can't do this.’ Instead, I always gave him options and let him know what the consequences would be — good, bad, indifferent — based on my best research. If you don’t do that, then people find a way at the end of the day to say you need to do more with less.”
3. Wherever, Whenever Possible: Plan Ahead
In many K–12 districts, navigating ever-changing numbers of students and forecasting educational technology funding in the face of uncertainty is simply a way of life.
Jeremy Owoh, superintendent of Jacksonville North Pulaski School District, sees wide fluctuations of student numbers year to year as a result of school choice. When his district was carved out of an existing public school district 10 years ago, leadership backed a tax millage increase to cover the construction of new buildings, a competitive schedule for teacher and administrative salaries, and a consistently dedicated amount to fund technology. As soon as the new buildings opened, district leaders also saw an opportunity to enact a technology refresh plan, setting the wheels in motion for technology budget support for regular refresh cycles.
“In this current state, with the fluctuation of funds at the federal and state levels, and even at the local level because of students who come and go as a result of school choice, we continue to plan strategically around how we’ll move our district forward by providing innovative technology, innovative instruction, teaching and learning for students, and professional development for our staff members,” Owoh explains. “We have been planning this shift for almost two or three years because we saw how the landscape was changing.”
As generative AI and other technologies evolve, early work with ISTE leaders helped the district build a foundation and infrastructure capacity to innovate and ensure Jacksonville North Pulaski wouldn’t be left behind. Owoh and teams of district educators, including teachers, counselors, assistant principals and the assistant superintendent, all attend ISTE + ASCD conferences together to learn as a team. This powers ongoing conversations on how “to build the right instructional setting and curriculum for our staff, so they can in turn build the right environment at the school level, in the classroom level,” Owoh says.
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