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Technology director warns of frequent cyber threats and seeks multi-hundred-thousand-dollar device and software budget
Summary
District technology leaders described a stretched team, a device replacement cycle, and a request totaling roughly $444,000 for district tech and software (with device replacement ~ $447,000); the presentation emphasized daily backups, the Student Data Privacy Consortium contract, and a cited figure of 4,388 cyber attacks per week per organization to justify stronger cyber defenses.
The district—technology director gave a detailed briefing to the school committee about infrastructure, staffing and security on March 17. The director said the technology department supports about 3,600 end-user devices, more than 100 instructional and administrative software programs, and the district's migration to cloud-hosted services.
Staffing is slim after retirements and internal reassignments; the director highlighted a student help-desk course that has refurbished 200 Chromebooks and said interns provide valuable repair capacity. The department—level replacement schedule targets Chromebooks at grades 2, 6 and 9 and plans to increase memory and performance in the next cycle to improve classroom experience.
On security, the director cited an industry figure—"4,388 cyber attacks per week, per organization"—to underline the level of threat schools face and described steps the district has taken: partnering with managed-services vendor Oak's Technology, signing the Student Data Privacy Consortium contract to limit vendor resale of student data, implementing daily backups and multifactor authentication, and adding cloud-based redundancy for critical services.
For FY27 the director outlined a technology request totaling roughly $444,000 for district-wide tech and software and an additional device-replacement estimate near $447,000; the director said precise cyber-security vendor costs will be developed before a final expense request is presented. Committee members asked about potential town partnerships on cybersecurity, hiring timelines for instructional-technology positions, and the tradeoffs between managed services and new staff.
