For 10 minutes, a student fidgets at a computer in his classroom, waiting for the screen to display an Internet Web page he needs for a research project.

His teacher has been waiting three times that long for her laptop to connect to the Broward County school district's central computer so she can look up the boy's grades from last year.

The teacher has called the district's help desk, but the phone at the overburdened office slips over to an answering machine or just keeps ringing.

It could be worse: In most portable classrooms no one has access to the Internet or the district's computer network.

A consultant's report and interviews by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel sketch out situations like these that some School Board members call a scathing indictment of the district's 10-year program to bring its technology into the 21st century.

"It reveals in each department how badly things are broken -- from not knowing how much juice is left in our mainframe to not having a disaster recovery plan" for data in case of a hurricane, said board member Lois Wexler.

Wexler, who has battled technology waste since the mid-1990s, is among board members who will use the report at a Tuesday retreat to press for massive reforms.

"This is not something that just came on the radar screen. Where was the sense of urgency that should have been there?" she asked.

The 160-page report praises the district for its huge financial commitment to technology, including $179 million each year just to operate the system.

But the report reveals that vast portions of the system are antiquated, overtaxed, error-prone and unnecessarily costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

No one is even certain what equipment the district owns or where it is -- an issue first raised six years ago.

More important, the district has no clear idea of its needs, even as it continues to invest millions to enlarge its technology system, the report states.

Should the district phase out Macintosh computers? Should portable classrooms be connected to the Internet with wireless technology?

Direction becomes crucial in the next 18 months because the district faces multi-million dollar issues such as expiring maintenance deals for hardware and software that no one is certain they want to keep.

The report by the Center for Leadership Technology (CELT) assesses a system accused year after year of inefficiency, confusion and waste. Recent scandals included a $20 million payroll software package that issued thousands of incorrect checks. The district also paid $327,000 for a financial program that it never used.

Reviewing options

On Tuesday, the board will review the results of the 90-day study and its 327 recommendations as the first step in overhauling the system. The second step would be to draw up a blueprint for that reform; the third step would execute it.

The Center, paid $225,000 for this phase, wants those two contracts as well, a process its chairman John Phillipo says could last three to five years.

While overhauling the system could cost millions, he predicted that just as much money could be saved. For instance, purchasing most goods online could mean eliminating a warehouse operation.

The Center did a similar job for the district in 1996, but Superintendent Frank Petruzielo scrapped most of the $1 million report and blueprint for reasons never fully explained.

Much of what it found then still persists. The district buys software without determining whether it solves a problem, or it fails to change old procedures to make the most of the software.

Referring to the payroll program, Phillipo said, "Here you acquired a very powerful software application, and the people who designed and installed the software knew what they were doing but they did not understand the [district's] business process. But the [district] people who understood the business processes did not understand the software. People were talking above and around and under each other."

Board member and computer consultant Marty Rubinstein concurred, "We made it fit our old way of doing things. It's the tail wagging the dog and we're paying for it now."

Another key problem: the district installed computers in classrooms before teaching educators to use them. Now it's trying to get training for skittish educators.

"Some teachers use technology very little, some use it as a supplemental [technique] and in some cases it's integrated and seamless," said Tammy Gilbert, assistant principal at Griffin Elementary.

Among the study's findings:

Computers overseeing the business operations of the district are in such disarray that most of the staff say they waste one to two hours a day coping with the inefficiency.

Information in the central databases can be so inaccurate that some schools rely on their own databases. Researchers tracking educational trends must correct mistakes in 25 percent of files they use before being able to analyze data. In one database, 16,000 student files contained errors.

Many think computer firms unduly influence what is purchased, through intense lobbying of board members and high-ranking administrators.

Contracts rarely are tied to whether the district gets what it's paying for. If a maintenance firm, for example, can't keep all the district's machines running, the firm still gets 100 percent of its pay.

The district has not kept its pledge to provide every school an average of four computers in every classroom.

The massive central collection of information from student grades to attendance -- the Data Warehouse used as a model around the country -- is a year behind in entering data. Catching up will cost $400,000.

From the classroom to the budget office, software has not been upgraded since the Y2K crisis. A teacher using an early edition of a program cannot open an e-mail sent by someone using a later version.

Next steps uncertain

The Center made recommendations, but they aren't specific enough for some members of the School Board's Technology Advisory Committee of educators and parents.

Chairwoman Catherine Keuthan said, "We want more of what they see as the critical problems and where we should be going and what we should be doing. There's none of that."

The recommendations require major decisions for the school district, such as whether to continue using its mainframe computer, which has limited memory left, or move information to a network of smaller computers which can be added on indefinitely.

Other suggestions include hiring a tech-savvy chief information officer and hiring one person in each school to troubleshoot technology problems.

The recommendations are not universally endorsed. One would standardize and centralize software purchases. But some educators are concerned a one-size-fits-all policy is not realistic for a district serving so many different needs, said Judy Terboss, technology specialist at Stoneman Douglas High.

The report also has flaws. The Center relied heavily on interviews and focus groups. Not all the information is accurate. It contends every teacher has a laptop, but that's not true.

In the end, the goal ties back to children, said new Chief Operating Officer Ken Klink, a businessman astounded at the "chaotic mess" he inherited.

"We have to change the processes and get technology done in the most effective way so we can liberate dollars that we can spend back on the kids."

Sun-Sentinel

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2003