Background
The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) supports eighty-two K-12 school districts in Los Angeles County. LACOE's support system is hierarchical in nature, with individual school districts supporting the 1,660 schools within the county. This hierarchical model works well for LACOE. The number of districts and schools within their county make it impossible to provide adequate support in any other manner.
Goals/Vision
Three years ago, LACOE developed its mission statement and identified four strategic goals. The mission and goals are as follows:
Mission Statement: We are a leading regional educational agency providing leadership, programs, and services to prepare an educated citizenry for the 21st century.
Strategic Goal 1: We will identify, develop, provide, and disseminate exemplary specialized programs for at- risk and other targeted populations.
Strategic Goal 2: We will be a model and primary provider of organizational and staff development services.
Strategic Goal 3: We will develop and implement an integrated communications network for service delivery and to assist in decision making, policy development, and constituency building.
Strategic Goal 4: LACOE will use technologies (voice, data, image) to develop and deliver educational information, curriculum and instruction, and staff development to every classroom in the region.
Goals 3 and 4 clearly set the stage for the future direction of LACOE's technology team. However, it was recognized that in order to begin providing the kinds of services they wanted to provide to every classroom in their county, a sophisticated communications infrastructure would first need to be established.
In supporting its own administration, LACOE is planning to use the Internet to communicate with its schools districts, county offices, and others worldwide, using email and FTP. (The county offices in the ten southern counties of California have all pledged to be connected to the Internet by the end of Summer 1993.)
The office is currently in the process of training its curriculum staff so that they will be able to develop strategies that integrate the Internet across the curriculum. These curriculum specialists will then be responsible for supporting the individual schools in bringing their staffs on board with the network.
LACOE has only recently offered FTP capabilities on the Internet; but word has traveled fast, and the demand for connectivity to both the Internet and the county office is keeping LACOE staff extremely busy. One unified school district is connected to the Internet through LACOE and a second district will soon be connected. Several other districts have expressed strong interest in this service and discussions with that district are underway.
By the end of fiscal year 93/94, LACOE estimates that eight to twelve districts will be connected via a digital line to LACOE. The county office will continue to assist school districts in their connectivity plans and expects the number of districts wanting a digital or Internet connection to climb.
LACOE's future plans include providing news services, bulletin boards systems, and Gopher servers via the Internet to county office and district staff, writing new interfaces to their mainframe applications, and providing district-to-district connectivity.
Technical Solution
Three years ago all the districts within LACOE's domain connected to the LACOE BULL mainframe via analog lines. Today, the analog network that connects to the mainframe is being replaced by a digital T-1 network. As district funding permits, several districts are replacing their analog lines with digital lines, thereby increasing the speed of their data transmissions. In some cases, the districts are merely switching from analog to digital by replacing their modem with a DSU/CSU. This allows them to move up in speed from 4.8K to 19.2K. Other districts have switched to a LAN/WAN based connection, using a router and a 56K ADN line to connect to the T-1 network.
The use of the mainframe is still a very important part of LACOE plans. They have recently installed a TCP/IP gateway so that microcomputers on a LAN can access the mainframe applications through a terminal emulator. All communication is via TCP/IP. LACOE is planning the installation of a UNIX front-end communication processor to the mainframe, which will enable the mainframe to look like a UNIX server for the purposes of doing uploads and downloads using FTP.
The office is running AppleTalk LANs with AppleShare Servers, IPX LANs with Novell 3.11 as the server and are running an Ethernet backbone. The LACOE LAN is router-based.
Funding
The connection to the Internet was initially funded by several divisions within LACOE that had a requirement to send electronic mail to other Internet users across the country. These divisions shared the cost of the installation. Now LACOE operates much like a mini-Internet Service Provider (ISP). For a flat annual access fee (and the cost of the routers), districts within Los Angeles County can route to the Internet via LACOE's server. The flat fee includes technical support and places LACOE and the district in a win-win situation (LACOE charges roughly half what other ISPs charge).
Training and Support
LACOE has established a help desk to receive incoming calls from its constituent districts on technical support issues, networking, software questions, and hardware acquisition. The majority of calls can be handled over the telephone, but occasionally LACOE staff make site visits to address a particularly problematic issue.
The training program at LACOE is a cost-recovery operation. Technology training (including Internet usage training) is offered by the Network and Information Services (NIS) Division within LACOE and is available to county and district staff. NIS announces class offerings by publishing available courses and their costs. Classes are taught at LACOE, although LACOE staff are willing to provide on-site training to districts who have the facilities, equipment, and networked environment for training.
Los Angeles County Office of Education Contact:
James K. Magill
Voice: 310-922-6143
Asst. Director, Systems Technology
Fax: 310-922-6768
Network and Information Services
Los Angeles County Office of Education
9300 Imperial Highway
Downey, CA 90242-2890
Internet: Magill_James@lacoe.edu
