Staff: One district-wide technology trainer, two district-wide network technicians, two district-wide computer technicians, one summer technology trainer.

In-direct staff: Eight campus computer technology assistants.

Corsicana was a large challenge when I arrived. The network was Novell and contained three trees. Most of the servers were beyond their useful life and there was almost no consistency in configuration or design. However, when Dr. Smith was the Director she built an excellent backbone for the network, which gave us a lot to work with. There had been a lot of consultants working in the district during the time prior to my arrival and they used many approaches, causing the inconsistencies. So we started rebuilding the entire network. Leaving the infrastructure in place, I reconfigured all the routers across the district  to allow a larger IP addressing scheme on the campuses. Simultaneously we rebuilt all the servers and repositioned as many services to the campuses as possible, as they all connected with T-1 lines.  We organized the work so that we worked one campus at a time. The project was done with almost no down time and while school was in session. To rebuild all seven main campuses and the three minor campuses, without interrupting network services or repair work, took over one year.

Another part of the challenge at Corsicana was a shrinking budget. A number of major business in the town were behind on their taxes and eventually went bankrupt. It was critical to update on a very limited budget. Grant opportunities were also limited and I turned to E-Rate for funds. The district went from filling five 471 applications the year before I arrived to 47 the last year I was there. We implemented a three year turnover schedule on the 80% and 90% campuses. The equipment replaced on these campuses was refurbished and used on the other campuses. 

Using E-Rate we also worked on the Internet and WAN bandwidth. When I arrived the district supplied 1.5mb of Internet for the entire district and all the campuses were connected with T-1s. When I left we had 4.5mb of Internet bandwidth for the High School, Middle School and one of the elementary campuses. (all 70%) We ran 9mb of Internet bandwidth for two of the elementary campuses and the sixth grade campus. (all 80%) Finally we ran 4.5mb of Internet bandwidth to the fourth elementary campus. (90%)  We connected all of the 80 & 90 percent campuses with gigaman circuits, the high school with two T-1s and the remainder with T-1s.

In order to deliver high speed video streaming from United Streaming to the T-1 campuses, without sacrificing our other services, we placed caching from United Streaming on to our own servers. No matter what campus you were on, the video streaming delivered at high speed. Using this distributive model we brought all of the services we could directly to the campuses with slow connections. By balancing the traffic this way we were able to deliver almost equal speeds on all the campuses for most network and Internet services.

My staff and I, along with the administration at Central Office and on the Campuses, found innovative ways to stretch a dollar and improve technology,  its delivery and its integration. In my Work Examples section I will present some of the key parts of Corsicana's Technology Plan & Process, including the extremely unique Teacher Technology Point System, and other projects I worked on while at Corsicana.

Dirk D Dykstra