The first 100 days

When i was first hired at a Charter School Management Organization (herein Our CMO), in 2005 the organization was young in its incarnation as a CMO but it already had started 3 schools. The oldest was several years old at the time. Technology at the schools grew organically.

The key projects we identified to accomplish in the first 100 days were:
1) Get a handle on ERate and submit our applications that were due in the next month
2) Redesign our website and the websites of our schools to match our new branding initiative
3) Develop a framework for how Our CMO engages with Technology

Number 1 was tough but extremely important. Our CMO is a nonprofit CMO that opens schools in poor neighborhoods with the goal to close the achievement gap for our students.
This makes us a perfect fit for ERate. However our prior access to the funds were spotty. This project was a trial by fire. I went to USAC's fairly good website and proceeded to familiarize myself with the process. I had a limited window as the first form (form 470) was due shortly after i joined. Due to our prior spotty record filling out applications (best intentions but the process is complicated) we were hit with a Selective Review Information Request for all of our applications. Thankfully due to my strict adherence to the guidelines we passed our SRIR and were eventually approved for all of the funding we requested. Unfortunately the hard part was actually getting those approved monies disbursed in a timely manner, but that is a later discussion.

Number 2 will probably go down as my most successful endeavor in my role at this organization (for good or bad). My overall technology philosophy is KIS, or Keep it Simple (most people know the acronym has an additional S however i try to exempt negativity from all that i do whenever possible). While many of the stakeholders were dreaming of a Java enabled website with rolldown menus and fancy doodads i wanted a simple HTML site that worked well in any browser but leveraged the beautiful collateral that was available to us. In the end my adherence to design philosophy while compromising in areas that did not impact design made for a successful project. For example one school wanted cycling images and quotes on its main page. We did this with a very simple Javascript (instead of going the route of using Flash or other similar tool) and isolated the request to the home page in a way that did not impact navigation or design. This overall success, with my grasp of technical knowledge that was displayed in meetings, built up some organization capital for our new IT department of 1, capital that would soon be quickly depleted.

Number 3. The next large task was to develop a framework for how the organization viewed IT and to begin to identify projects within that frame work. We broke down technology at Our CMO into 3 areas (its always 3 isnt it). Infrastructure, Data Management, Technology in the Classroom. Prioritization decisions were made to determine which of those buckets were most important to address at the time, which projects we would attempt to tackle, and the desired timeframe to tackle them in. Oh and we needed to open 2 new schools and move one other during the summer, and manage growth in every school as well...but that is for a later article...