[ale] Linux in Atlanta's public schools

[Jim Kinney]

The real issue with that excuse is it's just an excuse. They can get
outstanding support from RedHat or from local consultants. What they really
want is some one else to blame when something fails. If the school provides
all the support, not just reboot monkeys, then a system failure, or worse -
data loss -, is due to the school technical team. The larger the the school
system the more likely to want to shield the *decision makers* on the
technical side. Remember the old addage "no ever got fire for buying IBM"?
Well in school systems it's Microsoft and/or Apple.

I would almost put money on the table that large school systems technical
leaders could care less about student computer access and only care about
superintendent access and ability to deliver reports required for funding.
In fact, I would put money down that large school system technical leaders
would prefer NO student access.

Am I jaded a bit from past experience? Maybe. But when I spoke at NECC in
San Antonio in 2008 and told the crowd the greatest hurdle to Linux
adoption was political not technical, that one comment drew applause. That
room full of people was from all over the US.

Everyone knows the Peter Principle is alive and well in organizations. The
larger one have it in spades. People that can _do_ technical things don't
get promoted to leadership positions. The people that do get promoted show
abilities to schmooze the leadership and placate them with soothing words.
Technical skills are for others. The farther up the schmooze chain they
climb, the more dissociated from technical understanding they become.
Nothing sets off a high-level meeting like the phrase "We're have a
technical problem that we don't yet understand and thus can't give a hard
date for when it will be fixed.". Thus the people that wind up in the top
tier of technical decision making as a general rule are lacking in the
skills they are leaders for. So they can't really choose "proper course of
action" since they don't understand what is going on. They rely on the next
schmoozer down the chain to advise them. Smaller organizations have shorter
chains so more chance of good data getting to the top. Large groups,
however, grow very long chains of brown-nosers and thus the top is
dependant more and more on weaker information.

School systems are miserably political beasts and as such cultivate
incompetence as a leadership attribute. At APS, 3 of the last 4 IT
directors are either in prison or under indictment facing potentially 10-20
years in prison. In DeKalb county, the director of IT reads nothing but
Microsoft white papers to make his "high-level" decisions from.

<sigh>

and the kids just get crap


On Sun, Jul 14, 2013 at 12:12 PM, John Pilman <jcpilman at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Jul 13, 2013 11:45 PM, "Doug Hall" <doughalldev at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Practice this comment:
> >
> > Sure, there are companies which you could pay, that you could call upon
> for help when needed. However,
>
> If it is a requirement to have a support phone number, and it apparently
> is a requirement, and if those phone numbers exist, why not give the
> numbers to the people requesting them? Our experiences show that we do not
> need that type of support, so we should let the schools have that
> experience on their own.
>
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>


-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
*
*Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
*
http://electjimkinney.org
http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
*
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