Ragnar Danneskjoldd said:

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jah003 said:

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Teachers unions in Texas are essentially illegal.

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Why would you post with such certainty when you just don't know?

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Because teachers in Texas cannot strike or collectively bargain… it's illegal. So what exactly is the point in joining a "union" then?

CapCity12thMan said:

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Such as what

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Networking infrastructure
Micro segmentation of said infrastructure
SD-WAN
Unstructured data storage
Primary block storage
Servers (most things are virtualized on VMware or Hyper-V)
Firewalls
load balances
Power and cooling infrastructure (UPS units, crack units, backup generators)
Cabling infrastructure
Literally hundreds of software packages
VDI
Then add in all the SaaS like O365, blackboard, SIS, ADP, ect

That's just a sampling. And not all schools will have all of the above, but some will have all that and more.

here's an example diagram I did with one of my schools. Nothing on here is physically in a classroom, except maybe a wireless access point.

I am certainly no expert but you seem to be building a complete data center with redundancy. Why all the on prem storage. I can't read your diagrams they are too blurry.

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And when you do a TCO/ROI exercise, most of the time, cloud storage is more expensive

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I would disagree. It's not most of the time.

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dump all your storage in the cloud and it becomes a recurring OpEx cost, which will grow over time.

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not necessarily, if it is managed properly

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b/c school districts are the slowest to adopt technology.

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because the process of how public funding sucks. We have to constantly have increasing property taxes because the government is 15 years behind everything, and in todays world that costs more.

All you have really latched onto was cloud storage, a relatively inexpensive part of the cloud. Are there other compute or cloud service intensive operations an ISD must have that drives this bill up? Asking because I do not know, but having kids that have gone through school, and knowing the tech footprint of each and the use cases, the laptop farm with a solid internet connection can truely be accomplished if done right.

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And when you do a TCO/ROI exercise, most of the time, cloud storage is more expensive

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I would disagree. It's not most of the time.

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I do these all the time, using real-time numbers from the cloud providers. So i guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I will admit, i probably should have added workloads in the cloud and not just "storage." There's a reason a lot of companies are re-patriating a lot of their workloads. The best approach is hybrid, with workloads and data stores properly placed where they make the most sense. From a storage perspective, cold storage, such as glacier, in the cloud is actually fairly cost effective. DR in the cloud can make sense as well. There are obviously other examples.

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dump all your storage in the cloud and it becomes a recurring OpEx cost, which will grow over time.

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not necessarily, if it is managed properly

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I'd love to see a cloud cost that has stayed stagnant or reduced over time (without workload re-patriation). I'm not saying that it doesn't exist somewhere, but it'd be the exception. Storage needs only grow. Usually when I talk to customers who have declining needs, its b/c those are just shifting over to SaaS. It didn't go away, they are just paying for it differently than before. And for the "properly managed" piece, what about any school district shows you these things can be properly managed with under-funded and under paid IT staffs?

But again, with cloud vs on-prem, we can also go back to my previous point that most districts can't commit future funds, which makes the cloud subscription model difficult regardless of any potential cost savings.

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b/c school districts are the slowest to adopt technology.

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because the process of how public funding sucks. We have to constantly have increasing property taxes because the government is 15 years behind everything, and in todays world that costs more.

All you have really latched onto was cloud storage, a relatively inexpensive part of the cloud. Are there other compute or cloud service intensive operations an ISD must have that drives this bill up? Asking because I do not know, but having kids that have gone through school, and knowing the tech footprint of each and the use cases, the laptop farm with a solid internet connection can truely be accomplished if done right.

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Ultimately, I'm not here to argue cloud vs on-prem for storage, compute, or any other SaaS/PaaS/IaaS/etc. I was simply answering the question you posed asking for examples of IT that isn't in a classroom. Even if you move most of the datacenter to the cloud, that's still a "behind the scenes" cost that most people don't think about when they are looking at the cost of IT. There's a lot of things from a technology standpoint that are needed to "keep the lights on" in a school district.

A laptop for a student with an internet connection might be enough for learning, but that's not my point. I'm not trying to argue we replace books or even replace whiteboards with touchscreen tvs. My point is, there's infrastructure needed to get that internet connection to the student. There's infrastructure needed to ensure the school district isn't hacked. There's infrastructure needed to make sure kids aren't jumping on porn sites at school. There's infrastructure needed to help keep kids safe. There's infrastructure needed to manage student data. The list goes on. This infrastructure can be physical, virtual, on-prem, in the cloud, whatever...it still costs money.

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I do these all the time

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I am in this area as well and have been with clients where we lifecycle the data out (eventually). My initial thinking was student data would be data that could be lifecycled out of an ISD eco system (and by data I mean class work, papers, downloaded junk, things in G Drive, etc.). Their transcript history would be so minimal that things like that in Glacier are pennies. Again I haven't been in an ISD evironmentto know what the basck office demands are.

Since you mentioned Glacier I get you might be in the AWS space. I am currently in the GCP space after 12 years in AWS. As of Jan 2024, GCP does not charge for egress, FYI. https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/11/google-says-itll-stop-charging-fees-to-transfer-data-out-of-google-cloud

Does this bond cover the cost of the new high school build?

No. Just update existing buildings

perhaps some people on here are in construction, or would know..I know things like HVAC are expensive. Looks like 8M for fine arts upgrades, sound a lighting...this is $8M? What sort of sound and lighting is this? I know its expensive, but 8M?

Field turf...$65M? https://sportsvenuecalculator.com/knowledge/artificial-turf-field/how-much-do-turf-football-fields-cost

Charpie said:

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Does this bond cover the cost of the new high school build?

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Not at all. Just $800,000,000 for repairs and maintenance to roof and air conditioners. You read that right $800,000,000!!!!!! I find it hard to believe that is a thing. There are 59 Schools in RRISD. That is $13,560,000 per school. Plus we just had two hail storms in 4 years. Were we not insured?

Yes, there is surely a LOT of gold plating in that budget just to get the funding authorization. Then with such a huge budget many pet projects can be quietly added and funded.

BTHOB-98 said:

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Charpie said:

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Does this bond cover the cost of the new high school build?

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Not at all. Just $800,000,000 for repairs and maintenance to roof and air conditioners. You read that right $800,000,000!!!!!! I find it hard to believe that is a thing. There are 59 Schools in RRISD. That is $13,560,000 per school. Plus we just had two hail storms in 4 years. Were we not insured?

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Honestly, its not that shocking.

Charpie said:

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BTHOB-98 said:

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Charpie said:

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Does this bond cover the cost of the new high school build?

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Not at all. Just $800,000,000 for repairs and maintenance to roof and air conditioners. You read that right $800,000,000!!!!!! I find it hard to believe that is a thing. There are 59 Schools in RRISD. That is $13,560,000 per school. Plus we just had two hail storms in 4 years. Were we not insured?

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Honestly, its not that shocking.

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Actually it is since we were supposed to have the high school in 2021 and it's 2024.

"In 2015, the Round Rock Independent School District (RRISD) sold a $151.3 million bond to fund a new high school. The bond included fixed rate bonds at 3.02% interest and variable rate bonds at 1.5%. The bond was intended to help relieve overcrowding at Round Rock High School, which had 3,134 students enrolled in the 2015-16 school year. The district projected that student enrollment at Round Rock High School would increase to nearly 4,000 by 2021 without overcrowding relief."

https://news.roundrockisd.org/2015/02/25/district-finalizes-first-bond-sale-approves-contractor-for-new-elementary-school/#:~:text=The%20February%203%2C%202015%20pricing%20for%20the,bond%20sale%20will%20be%20received%20February%2025.

They did build a new Round Rock High School next to the existing buildings around then.

Round Rock High double in size.

Part of the problem with school district IT depts is that the rest of admin for some odd reasons thinks that they can run a school district without IT. It's really bizarre the way IT depts in school districts are viewed.

On top of that, RRISD is a district who lost A LOT of really good people in admin and a lot/most of their replacements have no clue. Then there is IT itself. RRISD was stupid enough to hire a 70 year old analyst and he does squat for the district. Literally the 2nd highest paid person in the dept but doesn't do anything.

RRISD needs to cut the fat and get people who actually know what they are doing AND pay the tech staff what they are actually worth to the district. This isn't the 90's where a district could get away with crappy IT folks.

Lots if IT talk. Maybe I missed it, but what percentage of the billion dollar bond is for IT?

Ferg said:

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They did build a new Round Rock High School next to the existing buildings around then.

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That was well before 2021. I believe 2012 or 2013ish. it's basically a new main building, to keep up with the growth. But the old buildings are all still used.

They've 'sold' the idea of a new High School to the community about 4 times. Years ago, they even had display models and information booths at our middle schools, promoting it at school events before bond votes...only to remove it from the bond package just before the voting deadline. But the $$ stayed almost identical. I posted the pre & post package details on here around that time...showing the differences in what was promoted, compared to what was voted on. Flores was notorious for crap like this. Don't know if I've ever met a more condescending human being.

I've never really had strong feelings about a school district. But goodness, if we were starting over again...our kids would be going to private school. My family is pretty 'basic'. Good kids, good grades, involved in extra-curriculars, etc... It's maddening some of the things we've had to wade through, for no apparent reason. There are some great people who work for the schools/districts. But geez, I feel like every year the 'crazy' gets worse and spreads.

AgGrad99 said:

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Ferg said:

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They did build a new Round Rock High School next to the existing buildings around then.

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That was well before 2021. I believe 2012 or 2013ish. it's basically a new main building, to keep up with the growth. But the old buildings are all still used.

They've 'sold' the new High School to the community about 4 times. Years ago, they even had display models and information booths at our middle schools, promoting it at school events before bond votes...only to remove it from the bond package just before the voting deadline. But the $$ stayed almost identical. I posted the pre & post package details on here around that time...showing the differences in what was promoted, compared to what was voted on. Flores was notorious for crap like this. Don't know if I've ever met a more condescending human being.

I've never really had strong feelings about a school district. But goodness, if we were starting over again...our kids would be going to private school. My family is pretty 'basic'. Good kids, good grades, involved in extra-curriculars, etc... It's maddening some of the things we've had to wade through, for no apparent reason. There are some great people who work for the schools/districts. But geez, I feel like every year the 'crazy' gets worse and spreads.

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If we could do it all over agine we would send all four of our boys to private school.

My kids are in rrisd. I'm a firm no way in hell am I voting for this.

But, it won't matter. We sucked up to many of the Austin voters who just vote yes on every bond that comes up.

They are easily prepared without "learning" on a computer. This is not to say that they don't utilize technology for projects, some assignments, etc. But, some subjects are best done on paper and pencil - I.e. math. Writing something as opposed to typing it helps people remember. I have 13 nieces and nephews that learned this way (all homeschooled) and they did/have done excellently in college.

But, hey, what do I know. I just have over 20 years experience in the field of education, taught thousands of students I made inferences and observations on, and have a Masters degree in curriculum and instruction.

Again, what percentage of the bonds are IT related to this bond? When I took a gander, it looked to be a pretty small percentage. Curious if I'm missing something, based on the discussion here.

Bonds used to be issued for capital improvement projects, while our taxes ran the district. Now the bonds are relied on to run the district. Yet, my property taxes keep skyrocketing.

Maybe I'm just a bitter tax payer, but I sure wish I could run my company's budget like the school districts do.

AgGrad99 said:

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Again, what percentage of the bonds are IT related? When I took a gander, it looked to be a pretty small percentage. Curious if I'm missing something, based on the discussion here.

Bonds used to be issued for capital improvement projects, while our taxes ran the district. Now the bonds are relied on to run the district. Yet, my property taxes keep skyrocketing.

Maybe I'm just a bitter tax payer, but I sure wish I could run my company's budget like the school districts do.

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Wasteful - yeah, we all wish this.

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Wasteful - yeah, we all wish this.

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Yeah, I know...and you're right.

I just dont know what will change if we just keep hitting the 'yes' button on every single bond that is put on the ballot.

AgGrad99 said:

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the district. Now the bonds are relied on to run the district. Yet, my property taxes keep skyrocketing.

Maybe I'm just a bitter tax payer, but I sure wish I could run my company's budget like the school districts do.

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you don't hire people with company funds that work to demand your boss gives you a bigger budget next year? you don't adopt deficits and blame everyone other than yourself for spending more than you take in?

AgGrad99 said:

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Wasteful - yeah, we all wish this.

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Yeah, I know...and you're right.

I just dont know what will change if we just keep hitting the 'yes' button on every single bond that is put on the ballot.

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Hitting "yes" every time on the ballot is what gets the districts unfettered options to do whatever they want, which usually leads to wasteful spending. Most of it is definitely not viewed through the lense of what is best for the students. It rarely is.

Most admin and central office I've experienced have just been "yes" men (wife and mom were both teachers).

The first three passed, the last one did not.

Kind of surprised the big bond passed as well as it did but the sports one didn't.

I'm not, Pflugerville had the same issue a few years ago. Big bonds passed, even the stupid ones, but sports did not. Now that all the line items have to be separate bonds, people are just not voting for athletics. College Station had to go back three times to make needed renovations to their oldest facility.

Dragon Stadium really needs updates/improvements. The facilities are a dump, and it's embarrassing. Unfortunately the community will likely never vote for it.

discobrob said:

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Dragon Stadium really needs updates/improvements. The facilities are a dump, and it's embarrassing. Unfortunately the community will likely never vote for it.

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Dragon should be demolished. There is no reason why all 5 high schools can't all use Kelly Reeves.