[lug] BVSD Windows vs Mac craziness

[Rob Nagler]

BVSD (Boulder Valley School District) has made a decision to use the
money from 3A to switch the entire district over to a 90%
Windows-based environment in less than four years.  The district is
currently about 80% Mac.

The rationale behind this decision can be found at:

http://bivio.biz/f/bvsd-20060117.pdf

There will be a BVSD Board meeting about this topic, Tue 1/24 at 6pm:

http://www.bvsd.k12.co.us/index_board.asp

The meetings are probably held at 6500 Arapahoe (Education Center) in
the Board Room (turn right off Arapahoe at the light;
and make another immediate right into the parking lot; the board room
is the west entrance to the building closest to the road).

Helayne Jones has asked for an "IT response" from the community.  It
would be interesting if you came with your own opinions, and perhaps
even a write-up.

For the curious, here's some background:

I have met with Robert Hammond, COO of BVSD a few years ago trying to
volunteer my services.  I (and several other competent "computer"
people) were stonewalled.  The meeting came about, because we moved my
kids school (Crest View Elementary) to a Linux server.

We're still running all the kids and teachers files on a single Dell
1300 (dual 500mhz, Mylex RAID) running FC4.  And, I went off to do
other fun things.

Unfortunately, the district won't go away, and they are wasting your
tax dollars with this "big bang" conversion that none of the teachers
seem to want.  They are still reeling from their "infinite campus"
(aka. infinite chaos) conversion, which will be slowed down by this
move.  Two years ago, they bought a big honkin' Mac OS X server,
claiming it was the right direction, and now we're moving to Windows.
Go figure.

Rob