Hello all… I’m looking to improve my personal knowledgebase with some new certifications this year. I work in a school district here in New Jersey, & was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for which ones would be more helpful for me to get. I have been doing support for the last 17 years, including being in my 5th school year doing desktop support for this district. I have my CompTIA A+.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to which ones might be most beneficial? I was contemplating getting my Google Certified Admin (we use the whole Google suite here) but they changed up the certifications & no longer have that one.
3 Spice ups
Might be worth looking into a Security Certificate. Since a school district will probably never be able to afford a security guy.
weirdfish
(WeirdFish)
3
Affording a security guy isn’t the main problem. It’s convincing administration (and often even the IT manager/director) that it’s necessary. We schools tend to live too long in the world of “well, as long as we stay under the radar, nobody mean will find us, right?” Or “we’ll deal with it when we have to.”
Yet, physical building security is a parade of overreaction if someone sneezes suspiciously…
Anyway, enough of my griping and proselytizing. 
Do you have any Microsoft contracts at all? Servers, databases, etc.? I know you said you’re a Google district, but K-12 IT doesn’t tend to value certs very much outside of the very, very basic for field/bench techs. Net+ or Sec+ could build out some fundamentals if you want to do more than just imaging machines and replacing projector lamps.
If you do maintain some MS products and you’re in a position to do so, can you tag along with some more higher-end network/system admin tasks?
The size of your district and whether you contract technology services out to an external provider will be variables in what to pursue as well. In my region, my district is one of the few that doesn’t contract our IT out to our county authority. We’re big enough (third largest in the county, and the county is the wealthiest county in the state) to where we don’t have to. Our IT department is large enough to where I’m one of three people whose sole responsibility is the SIS, state reporting, and other data management; I haven’t touched a punchdown tool or network continuity tester in 3 years!
Those could all play factors in which certs to pursue, as well as your own personal interests.
tb33t
(TB33T)
4
I highly recommend looking into the Network+ certification. Networking fundamentals will go a long way. I’ve seen it benefit my understanding when walking into a new LAN I’ve never seen before. Good luck!
1 Spice up
I mentor a few students a year in technology. My recommendation to them is Comp TIA first. Then depending on interest and desire networking or security. Our local community college offers certification classes in both. I am not a huge fan of vendor-specific cert’s. Back in the day, I was Windows NT certified. I knew more than the instructor who just read from the MS book, asked us the MS questions and only had the MS answers. Much of my skills came from shadowing others. Nothing beats real-world issues. Two things to remeber moving forward, you will never know everything and keep learning so maybe you can know everything.
