September 2008 — Features
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Making a Comeback
Lacking the resources companies have to protect their data in the event of disruptions, K-12 technology directors are devising their own backup solutions.
HE'S GOT THEIR BACK Tech
director
Mark Finstrom set up a
disaster recovery
site that can retrieve
his district's critical
data systems if a
calamity strikes.
YOU'RE AN IT ADMINISTRATOR. When it comes to disaster recovery planning, you know the drill. Back up everything. Store records in a separate location. Install redundant systems. Trouble is, you're in charge of a K-12 school district, and you have neither the money nor the staff to invest in and maintain state-ofthe- art data recovery systems, like those your counterparts in the private sector are blessed with.
As technology grows more pervasive in education, the data recovery issues that school systems encounter are becoming increasingly problematic, as districts work to accommodate a range of concerns that don't encumber commercial businesses. State and federal laws often require schools to report on student populations and educational progress according to mandated deadlines-- meaning that even if your school district has suffered a disaster, you'll somehow need to recover the data so you can file the necessary reports. You'll also contend with strict privacy regulations that require student data to be kept confidential-- meaning that even if you can't access the data, you'll need to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. And as remote learning becomes more and more commonplace, teachers and students need access to technology 24/7 and in widely dispersed locations-- meaning that you'll have to keep online access up and running even if the main school site is a disaster area.
"The issue is that you have to protect data and make it accessible at the same time," says Stephen Harris, a commercial building construction expert and principal of Harris & Harris Consulting, a logistics consulting firm based in Lincoln, VT. "Hospitals, for example, want their information kept in a different area of the country and in a different portion of the electrical grid so they're less vulnerable to blackouts. [That means] setting up mirror capacity in a different location. But it's expensive. A data center uses 350 watts of electricity per square foot, compared to 5 or 6 watts for a normal office building. School districts aren't going to be able to afford that kind of thing."
Work Around It
Pinched by tight budgets, many district IT directors have come up with imaginative workarounds that operate within the various mandates and limitations placed on K-12 information infrastructure.
For Mark Finstrom, director of technology services for Highline Public Schools in Seattle, disaster recovery planning is a matter of juggling budget restrictions with that unique set of data protection demands. "We have more data protection concerns than a business has," he says. "We can't release videos of students. We have privacy and family protection laws to follow-- we're very similar to hospitals in that respect." At the same time, Finstrom doesn't have the financial resources that a commercial business usually has. State funding for schools often does not keep pace with costs; public school districts in the state of Washington rely on local bonds and levies to make up for shortfalls.
"Our funding is based on state dollars and some bond or levy money," says Finstrom. "We're funded under [Washington's] Basic Education Act. The amount changes every year because it's based on the number of students we have in the district, which is currently 17,500. I get an allocation based upon BEA dollars. I have to plan with that in mind. I have to walk into a school year knowing I have a regular budget plus the bond or levy money, knowing what projects I have to accomplish and choosing which ones to drop if I have to."
