Who’s in charge?

By early in the 1990s there was both a lot of change and a lot of confusion. We had wired our dorms, the faculty now were all typing their comments, we had a computer lab, and some of the teachers and staff were trying email.

So the question was—who’s in charge? My quarter time position was an add to faculty, we had done two capital projects that were completely new, there were now licensing fees for software and no one was in charge of it all. Or maybe I was.

So many questions.

What was I? Computer guy? Technology teacher? Technology coordinator? IT Director? Who was going to make that call? What was that position worth and what should I get paid?

Who did I report to? Certainly I was not senior staff reporting to the Head or even the admin team. Should it be the Dean of Faculty? But she did not have anything to do with buildings. The Business manager? He paid the bills but had no authority over anything academic. The Building and Ground director? His team did some of the wiring and built my closets but they were really learning as we went and had no connection to the boarding or academic life of the school. The admission or development directors? They were now using some of the databases and email but really had no other connection. So who?

This ever looming question would remain unanswered for some time and in many ways remains a primary question at schools today? Where does the leadership and authority for technology belong? For some schools early on, it was the library director or the CFO or the Buildings and Grounds. Each of those had its repercussions.

As this rolled out for the next few years I was more and more asked to speak or consult to other schools. This was mostly pro bono but later became part of KJM Consulting along with the databases. The big question remained—where did IT belong?

I was blessed to have both an extremely forward-thinking and open Headmaster in John Ratté, as well as interact with the amazing administrative leadership team that he created and led. As I indicated before, we were all friends and the school was very informal and open. Every door was open and I could corral any Dean at breakfast or at a game and brainstorm about possible changes.

Nonetheless, no one knew where this was going except that it collided with 80 years of tradition. The division between academics, boarding life, finances and the physical plant were well tested and understood. Suddenly this “teacher” was getting buildings renovated, changing how boarding students communicated, changing how teachers did term end comments, innovating the admission office and creating large annual budget items. It was not normal.

I often imagine conversations in the Head’s office with that admin team struggling to figure out who is supposed to be “directing” me. I was working with all 6 simultaneously. Somehow the Head was willing to let it proceed. I can imagine a less progressive head simply saying “Stop!”. But John did not, at least to me. Because of this, Loomis Chaffee innovated years ahead of its sister schools who had 10-20 times the financial resources. 

This of course did lead to frequent collisions. The maintenance staff were quite protective of their “space” and now I had keys to almost anywhere. The boarding life people wanted to use internet access to reward behavior and I refused. The business manager had recently purchased a PC based accounting system and wanted to “integrate” all the offices with his software vendor – whatever that meant. Some of the hard core teachers still grumbled about having to type comments. The school built a new Admission building but would not let me comment on the design needs until after the building was 90% built. 

So my quarter time position consisted of running from office to office, pushing my agenda to the CFO or Business manager or Dean of Faculty or Dean of Students. I was still teaching three sections, coaching a club sport and doing one night a week monitoring a dorm and eating dinner with the students 3 nights a week. I also monitored the computer lab and did on the fly consulting to all the faculty and staff.

Clearly we were hurdling toward a crisis.

Could I require all faculty to communicate my email? Could I decide what platform to use and what software packages to buy? Clearly we had made tremendous progress and other schools were looking to us as a leader, but where does it stop? I am sure that at some senior admin meeting someone must have said “Oh my god. Here he goes again!”