tech vs books (was ibook article in the NYT)

[Charles Martin]

> From: Brian Hodkin <bhodkin at merlin.mb.ca>
> i welcome others comments

Okay, let me weigh in with my tale. First up, location: central Florida.

Here is a tale of two high schools.

The first one is Celebration High School in Celebration, FL -- a 
sleepy, Disney-created small town for rich idiots outside Kissimmee. 
Several books have been written about the place -- suffice to say 
Disney's utopian vision has run head-on into reality.

The school there has two HUGE Mac labs with at least 60 machines in 
each. I haven't been down there in quite a while so perhaps they've 
"switched" to the mobile lab approach by now, but on my last visit the 
labs were an explosion of colour with G4s and mostly CRT iMacs all over 
the place. The rest of the school, like the labs, run on Macs -- a 
total of about 300 machines altogether. There may be a few PCs in 
there, but they are rare.

Technical support staff consists of one (1) little old lady (actually a 
spry 60-year-old) and two student assistants (one whose job is simply 
to run cabling, move machines and other physical tasks this lady 
wouldn't be able to handle on her own). She describes herself as 
"happy, but bored" thanks to the reliability and ease of use of the 
Macs. She spends most of her time reading Mac web sites and keeping up 
with the latest news and software. The student assistants are part-time 
and are not paid. Hardware failures get handled by an outsourced 
Mac-specialist.

So that's one (1) paid tech for 300 macs. By the way, that's about 1 
mac per student average (only about half of them are actually available 
to students, so the ratio is more like 2:1).

Now let's move north to Seminole county and Lake Mary High School. It 
used to be about a 50/50 mix of Macs and PCs (teachers and 
journalism/arts students using Macs, the rest using PCs) until a 
Mac-hating superintendent of schools came along and phased out all the 
Macs. Despite the fact that they have more students than Celebration, 
they have roughly the same number of PCs, but more of them are 
available for students -- still, it's about a 2:1 ratio as well). 
Hardware failures can sometimes be repaired on-site, but most often go 
to the county's "depot" and are rarely seen again (sometimes eventually 
replaced with a new one, often not).

Guess how many techs they have for THEIR 300 PCs? Seven. Four 
full-time, three part-time, and they are looking to hire three more 
full-timers to meet demand!

That's ten techs for 300 or so PCs. Average salary per full-time tech: 
more than $40,000/year. Just between you and me, I think the lady in 
Celebration gets more money than they do, but you get the point.

Every time someone (ahem) points this out to the board of education, 
they rebut: "the machines are so cheap to purchase ..." or "These kids 
have to work on Windows because that's what they will be using when 
they leave." Apparently the IT expense comes out of a different budget 
so nobody cares that they are spending  at least 3x the cost of the 
machine per year to keep them in service, and can't even manage that. 
BTW, all the machines are running NT or Win98 to avoid licensing issues 
with Microsoft. As for the software ... let's just say the school lives 
in fear of a BSA audit.

Every time someone points this out to the teachers, they roll their 
eyes and mutter something about how nobody listens to them.

So, everyone on this list who's a parent or homeowner, paying taxes to 
keep your public school equipped ... how is YOUR school district 
spending the money you give them?

_Chas_
"Of course the people don't want war ... But after all, it is the 
leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a 
simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a 
fascist dictatorship or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... 
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of 
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are 
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and 
exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same way in any 
country."
- Hermann Goerring, founder of the Gestapo and Hitler's "No. 2"