“Sell your initiatives and successes—share them,” Young said. “Others need to learn from what you’re doing.”
Mable Moore, chief technology officer for Jefferson Parish Schools in Harvey, La., said her district’s focus has been on rethinking education for the 21st century.
“We imagined a new digital school district, where technology and curriculum could draw our students into places they had not been before,” she said. “We knew we needed a state-of-the-art network to get there.”
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Jefferson Parish was among the hardest-hit areas when Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005. It also was one of the first to reopen five weeks after the storm, welcoming roughly 28,000 of its approximately 50,000 students.
Over the last two years, the district’s budget has consistently shrunk in the face of less revenue and severe economic challenges. A spring 2010 reduction in force helped to balance a $30 million deficit across the board, but Moore said financial challenges remain, owing to fewer federal and state grants to assist with sustainability and maintainability of educational technology, professional development, and academic programs.
“In spite of a number of revenue reductions, we’ve continued to be able to offer professional development in our district on a much smaller scale,” she said. Jefferson Parish has looked to online learning for both professional development and virtual schooling.
Through a combination of grants, Title I funding, state and local resources, and e-Rate funds, the district created an implementation schedule, updated its telecommunications services, and completed a $50 million network upgrade with wired and wireless access and voice over IP service. This upgrade was completed in phases from 2006-09.
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