District Technology Plan

Houston Independent School District has five strategic goals which are: increase student achievement; increase management efficiency; improve public support and confidence in schools; create a positive district culture; provide facilities-to-standard program.

In devising the technology plan, the district conducted interviews and gathered comments and recommendations from a full range of district staff.
The district Long-Range Strategic Plan for Technology 2006-2011 covers a five-year time frame:
 Year 1: February 2006 to June 2007
 Year 2: July 2007 to June 2008
 Year 3: July 2008 to June 2009
 Year 4: July 2009 to June 2010
 Year 5: July 2010 to June 2011

The District Professional Development Strategy
The District Technology and Information System department (TIS) is in charge of providing professional development opportunity to all staff. The district needs to support users of data in their implementation and use of technology. This task is delegated to “Help Desk,” which is a branch of TIS. Help Desk is expanded to provide broader support for technology implementations use. For example, when a teacher, principal or other staff needs has a question related to technology, the Help Desk will be able to provide answers for them.

The district also has in place what is called “E-train.” E-train is an online training system which allows teachers and other staff to browse through the list of scheduled professional development trainings. Staff can choose the desired training they would like to attend and schedule for it online. Most of the trainings listed are provided free of charge. The school principal will provide funds to attend the ones that are not free.

The district constantly assesses telecommunication services, hardware, software, and other services to ensure improved student learning by upgrading and replacing hardware, software, and other network components that are becoming dysfunctional. The district implements a technology refresh process to replace or upgrade aging components as necessary.

The district is decentralized. This means every school is allocated a budget to make any necessary technology purchase or upgrade to cover the no-discount element of the plan.

The district evaluates the goals of this plan by examining it every two or three years in order to keep them relevant. The plan is revised constantly to keep up with emerging technologies.