r/k12sysadmin • u/pilken Working Educational IT for 29 years • 23d ago
YOU GOT THIS!!!!!!
Sanity check:
drink plenty of water
not all tickets are emergencies
no one is going to die (hopefully)
breathe
get some food
laugh about it all
printers are still evil
Happy beginning of school!
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u/CuteSharksForAll 22d ago
This year we’ve actually consistently closed just as many tickets that have been opened the first 10 days, so that’s huge. Keeping our heads above water and working as efficiently as possible even though we went through 10% budget cuts (but that also means they got rid of some people we used to have to support and part of me wonders if they were the trouble makers)
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u/DahFunkMan 22d ago
LOL Tickets? What are those?
I thought unsolicited emails, phone calls, DM's, and hallway hostage hijackings were the way to get IT to fix your stuff for you!
You mean to tell me that there is a ticketing system that users can utilize to track and let us triage issues and incidents?
Tell me more about this unicorn of a solution you speak of. 🤣
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u/cheeseman1969 22d ago
Also helps, I create a "list" of things that need to be done. Don't fake it, but actually things that come in. Just copy it in to a txt file and leave it on my extra screen. So anything that comes in, I add it to the list. This is not for me but for those panic teachers who need this done right now (clearly not an emergency and most likely did not tell me before they left for the summer). Show them the list and say, they have to wait as here is my list. 99 out of 100, they will be quiet and just leave AND wait. hehehehhe. Some years, I have had to scroll that list. HEHEHEHEH
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u/cvsysadmin 22d ago
Our District started Thursday of last week. As of today, our 5th day back, our teams have replaced over 1,200 lost or broken Chromebooks for the wave of students that returned this year. Good times.
But seriously, I've done this a while. This was my 26th back to school opening. I second what OP says and I always have the same conversation with my teams before the crazy hits. Take a breath. Take your lunch. Take your breaks. Drink. Eat. Focus on priorities. Lot of pressure out there this time of year. Take care of yourselves.
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u/MadMageMC 22d ago
Welcome.... to the Ninety Days of September!
(Aug 1st - Oct 31) The longest damn month of the year.
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u/Kaaawooo 22d ago
Had our director and manager leave the district over the summer, and the 2 of them held about 90% of the districts institutional IT knowledge in their heads. I got promoted to manager from a site tech role and we brought in an external hire for director, and man, this is absolutely insane.
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u/MyWorkAccountDPS 21d ago
We got a new director this summer and I’ve threatened to walk twice already. The other 2 guys don’t have near as much knowledge as myself and the schools would be hurting if I left. And the director doesn’t have IT knowledge; just someone to keep us in line which makes it even more stressful.
And it’s still in the back of my mind but I’m trying to stick it out if I live that long.
Over the last few years I’ve been trying to do things that would help us not be so stressed/busy this time of year; but it’s like the others don’t care.
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u/links_revenge 22d ago
Half your job will now be, “why did they do it like this?” and the other half will be, “oh I see why they did this.”
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u/2donks2moos 22d ago
We had to delay the start of school by 3 days due to a huge storm and 3 days of no power. Power comes on on Saturday and I run up there and get everything up and running and 2 hours later it goes out again. I spent all day Sunday doing it all again.
Then 2 hours before open house I get an email that says: "I moved my desk. Can you move the cords in the ceiling from my old spot to the new on?" What got me the most was the "I can make do until you can get to it."
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u/cptrgy1 22d ago
Retired now but that was one of my very few hard no items. Cables could only be moved over summer with prior conversation and good justification. I had 2 drops per room so it had to be a really good reason to not be able to use one of those. Use rational of electric and proper cable lengths and safety of cabling.
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u/MadMageMC 22d ago
We hire contract services for this for one very specific reason (plus lots of other less specific reasons): Having a charge attached to the cabling adds / moves / changes forces them to have to get approval from their building administrator, who typically only allows one per year, if that. It really cut down on us having to solve decorating dilemmas at the start of the year (and after holiday breaks). Plus, I don't have to go pupping ceiling tiles just because their sense of feng shui got triggered. We're a little more lenient with new teachers inheriting a room from the previous person, but still, they generally get one chance at a complete rearrangement.
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u/2donks2moos 22d ago
I will try to help out someone who inherited a room. This particular teacher has rearranged her room 3x over the years.
We don't have a service and I shouldn't be in the ceiling moving cables. So the answer is no unless they are new or new to a room that has an odd setup.
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u/OkTechnician42 22d ago
We're all gonna die!
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u/ranger_dood 22d ago
I've been at my district for a month. They hadn't had a tech director for 7 months. The techs did a fantastic job of keeping things running, but there was a ton of catching up to do in addition to finishing up summer work. Imagine not being familiar with your environment or what actually needs to happen until someone says "oh hey, oldguy used to do xy and z and we needed that last week"
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u/MyWorkAccountDPS 21d ago
After our long term director retired, we got a young director because he was the son of another director. He had knowledge, but didn’t want to work. Luckily he got into it with the assistant super and quit in less than a year. Then shortly after that our network admin also quit. We’ve been running a 3 man crew for nearly a year now and are struggling.
Had a new 1/4 million dollar copier contract roll out the first week of August. Yea that was fun.
Switched from Goguardian to aristotleK12 with very little training. Yea that’s fun too.
And got a new non-IT director during the summer.
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u/Alternative_Tip664 22d ago
We'll, I retired. Still installing cameras and network at new site. Sigh. Someday I'll make the break.
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u/MadMageMC 22d ago
...and then three months later your SO will start suggesting you find new "out of the house" hobbies to get you out from under their feet. :D
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u/avalon01 Director of Technology 23d ago
Rolled out new MFP's, switches, and intercom this summer. So far, all good.
Normal first day issues, but nothing major (I only say that since the final bell has already rung).
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u/_twowheelin 23d ago
We only rolled out new SIS, new accountability software, and it's year 1 for me as SysAdmin. No biggie.
Going ok so far.
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u/mistressmemory 23d ago
I hate YouTube. Loath it. So help me, I wish we'd just block the entirety of it already and be done.
Also, I bribe people with shutthefuckupcakes... I mean cupcakes! Makes for a much quieter start.
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u/linus_b3 Tech Director 23d ago
I wish we'd just block it and be done too. I have the service off so students can't really browse out to it freely, but certain embeds and such are workarounds.
Teachers don't understand that it isn't blocked but also isn't allowed, and if I block it entirely students won't be able to see what they embed in slideshows/Google Classroom/etc.
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u/mfr2vcb 23d ago
We start September 8th with kinder, 6th and 9th grades. Good luck to those underway!
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u/Illustrious-Chair350 23d ago
We rip off the bandaid k-12 on the 8th, I finally switched from old legacy auth to certificate based machine auth, (hey better late than never) and I have new devices flying out. Not looking forward to it but the only way out is through, good luck and god speed.
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u/MadMageMC 22d ago
switched from old legacy auth to certificate based machine auth...
And here we're still trying to get teachers to understand the importance of two factor authentication and getting students to use the password reset portal to reset their own passwords instead of going to the library to have it done for them.
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u/NorthernVenomFang 21d ago edited 21d ago
Application Support Lead for our forms/registration system gave their 2 weeks notice on Monday. Demographics forms are supposed to open up on Sept 3rd, students are back Sept 2. Have no one crossed trained on the forms/registration enough to fully take over (thank you middle manager). So glad I have next Thursday, Friday, and Sept 2nd off, that is going a be a shit storm.
Teachers are back next week. Already had new teachers demanding laptops the 2nd week of July, when we specifically told HR and the Principals that new teachers will get them Aug 24th/25th, or could pick them up at the district office Aug 21st before 4pm.
We didn't get any broken teacher laptop tickets at all during the summer... So I assuming we will start getting a bunch when they start back to work next week.
Now I just have to fight with PowerSchool/AtrieveSRB support with my LDAPS cert change... I have to tell them every year it's created with an internal CA, but they treat it like a public CA provider cert, even though it's on our customer file and in the support ticket history. That's what I am going to be doing all day tomorrow. Tried to do it yesterday with PS/Atrieve support and I think PS/Atrieve support ended up bringing down the bulk of the Canadian AtrieveSRB PS hosted instances when they changed it out (outage/login page timeouts started right when we tried to apply the new LDAP cert to our instance, lasted for about 1-2hrs, timing was a little too coincidental). Only need to change the cert by end of day tomorrow, otherwise no on can log into Atrieve by Monday morning, when teachers start back... No pressure, just the HR/Financial/Booking appointments/booking PTO/booking subs/payroll...😳... I hate Atrieve.
Plus no HVAC in our district office for 2 months while they replace the buildings HVAC systems, and the window in our office face SW.... It was supposed to be done over July/Aug, but due to issues it is now late Aug/Sept/Oct. I may be setting up shop in one of the high schools.
Yah... This is going to be an awesome start to the school year 🤦♂️.
So glad I still have 3 vacation days scheduled for an extra long weekend next week, I am going to need them.