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Hi all,
I am assigned as the IT person to a new school.
At this school the budget is completely government regulated and budget for IT is very limited and almost non existent.
Although they are receiving new laptops by the end of this year, most computers are old desktops.
They don’t have a domain, centralized storage or backups.

My goal is to help them as good as I can but I would like to hear from you what would you do?

I’m curious to finding out if I should try to get a windows domain up and running or avoid it as much as I can due to the cost it brings. Any other option to centralize the management of these devices are very welcome.

What options would you use for centralized storage? A NAS or a windows server/Linux server with file storage features?

And as third big piler, what would you do for backups?

43 Spice ups
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First up, check out Tech Soup and E-rate to try and save money on things across the board.

For backups, I’d use Veeam Community Edition (free) depending on how many workloads you need to protect, and backup to a Linux Hardened Repository (software is free, just need an old server with local storage to go to).

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(Mark686047) 3

Can you get free Microsoft licenses?

I would say the first thing you absolutely must do is to try and get some kind of backups in place.

You can get A1 licenses for schools for free and relatively cheap A3 licenses too. 1 A3 licensed will give you access to Intune and Endpoint Manager so you could use that instead of a domain.

This would work nicely with the new laptops but I suspect not so much the desktops.

With the A1 licenses you can get 1TB storage per account and unlimited accounts so all staff and students would be able to save their data there, use SharePoint for collaborative documents, etc. The only thing you can’t do is use the desktop versions of office365 software like Word. That needs an A3 license.

You can consider using one of the desktops as a NAS and using it for backups. Depending on where the data is, you could back it up via scripts to a NAS.

If you want a domain, then you can look at OVS-ES licensing because that way you pay a fee per year based on the full time equivalent number of staff and not have to pay for a server 2019 license in full up front, for example. You could also use it to license windows 10 on the desktops if they can run it.

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I suggest you first find out how things get used, and what the pain points are.

I worked for a school district 25 years ago, and I know that what is available and needs are very different now.

Back then, I setup servers and domains to support card catalog systems in the libraries, and for student information systems for attendance and grades.

Now there is Wi-Fi, and that stuff has moved to the web and cloud based services. Students and staff have access to Google Drive or OneDrive. There may not be need for local centralized storage. How would it be accessed while working at home? Don’t go blindly trying to apply the tools of the past to the current environment.

I do agree that there should be backups, especially of student records.

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  • And in which country is this new school?
  • Is this your first school you got assigned to?

In many countries and States, there exist initiatives of industry or teachers or user organizations to offer solutions for schools. Have a look at Debian.org Debian​, especially their education pure blend DebianEdu resp. SkoleLinux . There exist also some network and initiatives in several countries and networked via the RaspberryPI Foundation. Have a look here , even if no Raspberry Pi OS nor Raspberry PI will get used at your new school. The pandemic may have created government programs and parent programs to assist the schools of their kids. Some of these initiatives might be better than others. Some might cause running costs not budgeted nor sponsored.

Eventually, some NAS might be appropriate. Eventually some Nextcloud 9​ solution of current version might be appropriate of your government does not provide a cloud for your school. What you government provides should also include backup.

Find out what your government already provides for their schools. A domain is definitely helpful. But if the running costs are not covered by your budget and if the government does not provide domains for you, there also exist AD domain options on Linux. And as others have already mentioned, you might be in a country where Microsoft offers free licenses for schools which would include also AD at no costs. Your government might have also an agreement with Microsoft for some paid license and may integrate your school into their infrastructure for their schools.

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Go Google Workspace for EDU, Chromebooks and drop ChromeOS Flex (free to download and use) onto the old machines, will make them run like new.

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I was the director of technology for schools for 20 years. People make fun of me for saying this over and over again, but if all possible use Chromebooks and take advantage of the Google for education infrastructure. It’s the best!

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Genuine question, but how do all Google schools with Chromebooks do video editing with a class of 30 children?

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I’d back those above - check out Google and Microsoft’s offering for education, I believe you’ll find a nice free offering from each - moving your data storage on cloud will change your requirements for backups considerably. If you continue having Windows desktops, you probably still want AD for management, but user accounts can be synced to Office 365 easily enough.

What’s their student data management and accounts like? I’d hope computerised, but I know a few schools are still stuck in the past and using paper records. For both I’d be seriously looking at cloud hosted solutions rather than investing in new servers and thus the requirement to keep them updated. Outsource the hard work to someone else and have done - you’ll have enough work keeping up with user devices.

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I would advocate for Windows AD very strongly, but having been in that position where there is not any money for IT no matter the argument (our fileserver is down and we need a replacement, it’ll cost $4000. We cannot function without it. Response: Well, you need to find something else) you can try Turnkey Linux SaMBa AD. I have used a SaMBa for over a decade at home and have had little issue with it (except its SYSVOL replication bug) until trying to upgrade it and migrate it to Windows AD; I believe this is mostly due to not having kept up on updates of SaMBa.

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I have done IT at a school before. It always was a mess, and yes they do have regulations for how they spend money.

Here is what I would do: use google to centrally manage chromebooks. the google portal is really cheap i believe, if not free. Plus as 1 person it’s easier to manage.

What options would you use for centralized storage? I would setup a file server and limit users mailbox size, and make it known they cannot get more storage. Or, get them google drive accounts and let them use those. Then you don’t have to manage data or server storage.

What would you do for backups? Get a decent backup vendor with service accounts to access what they need. Make the district know that the option is either A there is a catastrophe and everything will get lost, or B they can pay to back it up.

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I’ll reiterate that Microsoft offers free and discounted services to nonprofits and educational institutions. In terms of hardware, I’d recommend googling “surplus/used computers/hardware”. Yes, it’s a lot like dumpster diving but beggars can’t be choosers. With a low enough budget “used” is seen more as “recycled” than “second-hand”.

If you’re ever looking for network infrastructure, I’d step away from the surplus auctions (due to licensing) and look at MikroTik.

Don’t be discouraged; the most innovative solutions are made with creativity, willpower, and not enough funding

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What grade level is your school? Students in K2 do much better with iPads.
Students in High School would do much better with Chromebooks or iPads with keyboards, given the amount of typing now required.

Try your best to get the superintendent involved with your task, if you can get them on your side and have admin backing your efforts, this will make things smoother as this will cost the school major funding.

Good luck, and always document everything.

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I worked in educational IT for 13 years.

Your first step, like any other IT person, is to find out how current systems are used, and what the organization needs to accomplish. This includes:

  • Needs the organization needs that they know about (record keeping, finances, printing)
  • Needs the organization needs to teach to (Do they want to teach typing? Is Microsoft Office teaching necessary? What do their computer classes if any teach? What academic learning skills do they teach through their computers?)
  • Needs the organization needs that they don’t know about (backup, ransomware protection, web filtering to remain CIPA-compliant for federal funding, bandwidth)

Once you’ve found these, you can start to prioritize both cleanup of what exists, then organization, optimizing, and documentation.

You’re going to want to make use of any advantages given to nonprofits and education (I’m assuming this is a non-profit; if you’re working at a for-profit charter school, you’ll likely need to approach this separately). Note that Microsoft has free or greatly reduced options for Office 365 for schools, and Google also does with Google domains for education. Which route you go with depends on how you design your system, and may also greatly depend on whether you have computer labs, or an actual 1-to-1 student environment where every student gets their own computer (in which case, you’ll need a system for inventory and accountability as well). Many vendors also have educational pricing options through someone such as CDWG to allow for less expensive hardware (e.g., Epson has had a program for their digital projectors, but that’s one example of many).

I greatly recommend fixing the system anywhere it is broken right now before adding on much, but knowing in some cases the fix may require hardware or software. Don’t try to get away with cheap hardware or software to fix a problem. DO try to work with best-for-your-money solutions that will last, and always show your administration the return they get on the money they spend, and how long things will last them. Use compliance as a stick when necessary (e.g., if we don’t do this, we will lose federal funding due to CIPA violation, etc.). Also, know that there are grants out there that may allow you to get some of the things you need. Find someone who understands the grant system, and use it to your advantage. When purchasing hardware or software over a certain cost, always write a very specific RFP (so vendors must narrowly match what you want) and if it’s over a certain cost, require three bids always.

That’s just some beginning advice. You’ll learn a lot more as you go. Good luck. =)

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Google may have free and less expensive options, but that comes with a proportional lack of support and service (practically none). You can be arbitrarily shut down for days with no way to contact them for emergency resolution or mitigation other than emails which generate cannned responses and no clear resolutions.

Not saying it’s not an option, but be aware of it.

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Your first priority should be backups. Even if you have to buy a couple of cheap USB drives and back up to that. Protect your data must be the first thing you do. It doesn’t matter how you do it at this stage, but get it backed up. Once you have a working backup solution you can start to look at other things and enhance your backup further down the road.

Whats the point of building a new network and shiny new kit if you loose all the data before you get it in place.

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There are options

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I’d start by first identifying what your needs are right now. Is every teacher/administrator able to easily do their job? Is every student that needs to use a computer able to do so safely and securely? What are you areas of contigency or in other words what are the things that if went down would cause mass chaos in your school? If you’ve already done this great if not I would start with basics first and work your way up to more complex challenges.

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This might become a multi year rollout since you have very little budget. If there is someone at your school that is good at writing grants, see if you can get one for a technology upgrade. E-Rate is great for getting new network equipment and paying for some services. I spent many years in a low budget IT Department for a public school district. There are many things out there than can subsidize your department and there are many free things for non profits. The best bang for your buck is getting a Google Workspace domain going and getting Chromebooks, The management is worth every penny.

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I may be wrong, but they were probably asking about professional video tools like DaVinci, not just some beginner stuff for trimming videos.

In the large school district I was at, everyone ran ChromeOS except 2 small labs which were teaching high school students professional photo/video/3D editing and the other lab was for CAD/3D, had to run Windows while everyone else ran on ChromeOS just fine.