Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,160
- Reaction score
- 7
School for deaf and blind gets relief from computer network | Richmond Times-Dispatch
The Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind and the state's IT agency say they have agreed on a plan to remove classroom computers from the Virginia Information Technologies Agency's purview.
The 173-year-old Staunton school began this summer to dump more than half of its 200 computers and consolidate the rest into computer labs for students and teachers to share, just to pay its IT bills.
School administrators and board members argued that the school's computer network should not be covered under the state's massive, one-size-fits-all IT contract with Northrop Grumman.
But the school is technically a state agency, and the IT for executive branch agencies is managed by VITA.
State computer chief Samuel A. Nixon Jr. and school Superintendent Nancy C. Armstrong had tried unsuccessfully to meet and discuss possible solutions to the school's situation, including a way to lower the school's monthly IT costs of $27,700.
The two met Monday morning and agreed on a path forward that would allow the school to peel the instructional classroom computers away from VITA control while keeping the office and administration functions on VITA's network.
"It looks like we're going to get a little relief there, which is wonderful" Armstrong said. "I couldn't be happier."
Nixon, who has said that the VITA delivery model is not well suited for an educational environment and offered to work with the school on a solution, called the path forward "the right thing to do for the right reasons."
"I think it's a good solution," he said.
Details of exactly how the transition will work have yet to be worked out. Northrop Grumman owns the computers, so the school will return those and purchase its own hardware. It will also have to create an infrastructure to support the instructional computers, from Internet access to security.
The new computers will not be in place by the start of school Aug. 24, but Armstrong expects to have them in place by Thanksgiving.
The school will sustain initial costs to buy and install computers and a support system, but Armstrong hopes to see savings over the long run from not paying a VITA bill. The annual VITA tab was $335,000, though it's a fraction of the school's annual budget of $10.3 million.
"Initial costs will be there, but I'm just delighted that they came to the table with a plan, and it's a plan that's going to work for us," Armstrong said.
The Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind and the state's IT agency say they have agreed on a plan to remove classroom computers from the Virginia Information Technologies Agency's purview.
The 173-year-old Staunton school began this summer to dump more than half of its 200 computers and consolidate the rest into computer labs for students and teachers to share, just to pay its IT bills.
School administrators and board members argued that the school's computer network should not be covered under the state's massive, one-size-fits-all IT contract with Northrop Grumman.
But the school is technically a state agency, and the IT for executive branch agencies is managed by VITA.
State computer chief Samuel A. Nixon Jr. and school Superintendent Nancy C. Armstrong had tried unsuccessfully to meet and discuss possible solutions to the school's situation, including a way to lower the school's monthly IT costs of $27,700.
The two met Monday morning and agreed on a path forward that would allow the school to peel the instructional classroom computers away from VITA control while keeping the office and administration functions on VITA's network.
"It looks like we're going to get a little relief there, which is wonderful" Armstrong said. "I couldn't be happier."
Nixon, who has said that the VITA delivery model is not well suited for an educational environment and offered to work with the school on a solution, called the path forward "the right thing to do for the right reasons."
"I think it's a good solution," he said.
Details of exactly how the transition will work have yet to be worked out. Northrop Grumman owns the computers, so the school will return those and purchase its own hardware. It will also have to create an infrastructure to support the instructional computers, from Internet access to security.
The new computers will not be in place by the start of school Aug. 24, but Armstrong expects to have them in place by Thanksgiving.
The school will sustain initial costs to buy and install computers and a support system, but Armstrong hopes to see savings over the long run from not paying a VITA bill. The annual VITA tab was $335,000, though it's a fraction of the school's annual budget of $10.3 million.
"Initial costs will be there, but I'm just delighted that they came to the table with a plan, and it's a plan that's going to work for us," Armstrong said.