District Red Tape

I was a little upset to hear about a problem my tech coordinator had at his other school this week. It was related to our webpage redesign. You will recall that we are contracting with a content management system called School Fusion, a company that I learned about in my last class. He was very impressed with them, so he proposed the idea to his other school. After some negotiations, they decided to take out a contract with them as well.

Well, when running their contract through the district office, the head of technology from MPS was extremely upset and told them "absolutely not." The principal was called and scolded.

I feel this shows the lack of knowledge about current technology on the part of the district office. They are requiring the school to use the services of the district's technology office (at a price, of course) to create their page. What this "leader of technology" obviously doesn't understand, is the difference between what he has to offer, a static web page, and what School Fusion has to offer, a webpage where teachers can have their own classroom pages that they themselves can update from any computer.

I felt bad, because I was the one who introduced the whole idea in the first place. I guess I should be thankful that we were able to get our contract without being picked up on the radar. It sure doesn't seem very fair, that a school can be told how they have to spend their own budget.