Projected Costs for KY K-12 Technology Needs
The 2018-2024 Master Plan Budget for Education Technology represents a statewide budgetary projection outlining the total cost of ownership for the primary technology components, services, and people needed to ensure ease of access to an equitable 21st century learning environment. In accordance with KRS 156.670, this budgetary projection establishes the baseline technology need for all Kentucky public schools and districts, and includes the annual costs to sustain the education technology shared services provided by KDE to all schools and districts statewide.
Each Master Plan Budget item represents an industry standard "best practice" approach as opposed to a requirement, and carries the expectation that a wide variety of local, state and federal funding sources should be leveraged to address the ongoing need to implement and incrementally replace all technology components and services (701 KAR 5:110). The fiscal year 2013-2018 Master Plan budget reflected an annual overall need of $322,126,501 compared to the newly projected annual need of $366,331,442.
This budget projection does not reflect the additional technology components and/or services that districts choose to implement above and beyond the baseline need (security cameras, video surveillance systems, environmental technology, personal data storage devices, smartphones, etc.), but are recognized as flexible priorities that districts may address exclusively with available local and/or federal funding sources.
Each district is required to report overall implementation progress for all baseline technology components, services, and staffing on an annual basis. The annual statewide reporting cycle consists of three required components in order to participate in the statewide funding program:
- District Technology Plan
- Digital Readiness Survey
- Technology Activity Report
The delta between that which is outlined in the Master Plan Budget as targeted projections, when compared to actual implementation progress as identified in statewide reporting determines the remaining Unmet Need. The state funding program and subsequent annual offers of assistance are specifically targeted at reducing the remaining district unmet need.
The Master Plan budget also anticipates that as technology components and services continue to evolve, innovation will continue to reduce costs and/or possibly even reduce the dependency on a particular technology component. As an example, it's expected that as end-user access to digital content increases, the reliance on printing services will naturally decrease over the six-year span of this plan. Conversely, as the expectation of high-speed access to digital content continues to escalate, it is anticipated that the costs associated with Internet access will continue to increase at a moderate rate. The technology need budget projection line item worksheet is found in Appendix
H.
The following frequently asked questions allow for further understanding of the education technology need calculation as well as provide a common language when addressing district-level technology budget planning:
Question 1: What is considered "technology"?
Answer: Technology is usually something that has electricity flowing through it (plugs into something). However technology is always something that (1) connects to or through the Internet or any network by a wire or wireless, and/or (2) has data, information, voice, sound, images or video created, entered, displayed, stored or flowing back and forth and/or (3) involves digital (i.e., learning/teaching, training/PD, decision making/analysis, communications, reporting or online assessment). OET and district EdTech staff must be involved at the very beginning (i.e., concept phase) and throughout initial implementation and ongoing service for anything EdTech, regardless of (a) the funding source/method (including "free") that acquires the EdTech product/service and (b) who builds/provides the EdTech product/service.
Question 2: What is considered a KY K-12 Enterprise System?
Answer: Any technology enabled system that (1) has more than one KDE division using it, (2) is a pilot and has great potential to be used by more than 10 districts after the pilot or is already used by more than 10 districts, (3) is a data source that will be used by one of our "big data" systems and/or (4) is very high profile/mission critical. Typically, it is designed and implemented to handle scale, to ensure it is reliable and to be very easy to use as well as a great customer experience by the average person.
Question 3. Why are OET and district EdTech staffs so insistent on being involved with any type of enterprise EdTech product/service initiative no matter who is funding it (including free) building it /or directly providing the EdTech product/service to the school or program areas?
Answer: Ninety-five percent of the nation's CEOs (including superintendents) blame the KDE CIO and/or the district CIO for any failure or any major issues/controversy of any KY K-12 EdTech enterprise system. In addition, OET and district EdTech staffs have up to 25 years of experience/wisdom of successfully implementing hundreds of large scale, high visibility, EdTech systems. This experience proves to be very helpful during the implementation of successful budget planning, deploying, integrating, maintaining and providing cyber security for all enterprise level EdTech product/service in KDE and/or school districts.
Question 4: What is total financial cost of ownership (TCO)?
Answer: Typically, the initial purchase price to build or buy a technology-enabled product/service only represents 20% of its true cost over its life. The other 80% is the people, software and hardware costs of initial/ongoing training, conversion, integration, telephonic/onsite repair/break fix, ongoing maintenance and incremental upgrades, and its relationship to and impact on other KY K-12 data systems (aka change management).
Question 5: What is (a) KDE's process for acquiring initial and ongoing funding of KY K-12 education technology enabled enterprise systems/product standards for KDE program areas and/or school districts?
Answer: KDE, almost always, implements a full RFP process. However, a sustainable funding source first needs to be identified for initial purchase, plus at least six years of TCO recurring costs.
Even if the cost is "free," consideration must be given to TCO over six years and have written agreements.
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