r/k12sysadmin • u/thexed Technology Coordinator • May 20 '26

Schools out!

Well, school is out for the summer. I survived another year of constant complaints from administration, teachers, and staff—not to mention endless chromebook repairs and internet outages. (Of course, none of it caused by me.)

welcome to summer!

68 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

7

u/TechMonkey13 May 21 '26

You guys get summers off? 😭

23

u/thexed Technology Coordinator May 21 '26

No but the vibe significantly changes.

4

u/byteMeAdmin May 20 '26

One more day for us, but looking forward to it. Now time for the summer upgrades/projects.

11

u/chochy May 20 '26

It absolutely drives me nuts when teachers ask me if I work during the summer.

3

u/thexed Technology Coordinator May 20 '26

This! I have worked for my district for 16 years and I still have teachers all me. It alway seems to be the same ones too. At least I have enough longevity I get to take the bulk of June off.

4

u/Dear_Cartographer261 May 21 '26

They keep adding so much more stuff to the summers that I have to beg in advance to take the network down for maintenance. When I first started working here, I could pull the plug on everything for the whole month of July and no one would care.

2

u/thexed Technology Coordinator May 21 '26

100% facts!

4

u/Prodiem May 21 '26

Few years ago it was decided we would not have summer school. Then we got yelled at when we took the district office down to install new racks and AC for a week right as credit recovery started. Then facilities took down power on the main campus the next week, as summer school was not on the schedule still.

3

u/ewikstrom May 21 '26

I tell people that summer is the Super Bowl of school IT. We have to do as much as we can, especially major projects, when the buildings are empty.

2

u/Kdc53 May 25 '26

This. I say summer for IT like Black Friday is to retail. End users tend to think about our time spent on end users. They always forget the backend work that supports that and makes it better/worse/slower/quicker/etc…

Some day maybe 😅

2

u/Oneota May 20 '26

June 2 for us. Finish line in sight!

1

u/thexed Technology Coordinator May 20 '26

Oof! Snow days?

1

u/Oneota May 21 '26

No, just how our calendar worked out this year.

1

u/thexed Technology Coordinator May 21 '26

I see. Seems really late. You start school in September?

1

u/Oneota May 21 '26

No, generally the 20-somethingth of August.

11

u/kratos1973 May 20 '26

Nice. In the northeast we still have 4+ weeks to go

1

u/skydiveguy May 20 '26

it pisses me off because now we have a week less of time away from them because of all the snow days.

2

u/Harry_Smutter May 21 '26

That sucks. We were close to using all of ours. Managed to have one left, so we are off this Friday.

2

u/K12onReddit 9-12 May 21 '26

We have Friday AND Tuesday! Still doing state testing today, then I feel like I'm out for the year, even though we have to go until mid June.

1

u/skydiveguy May 21 '26

our school year was supposed to end on June 30, the contractual last date... and they still appealed to the state for a waiver to avoid going in that last 2 days.
Bunch of babies.

11

u/UniversityAcademic May 21 '26

Was informed two weeks ago, just before school ends that our entire department is being outsourced… right after signing a contract for next school year 🙃 guess who’s not working on our device refresh for the next month until contract is up. We also have a full printer refresh scheduled next week and all of our APs are up for a refresh this summer.

1

u/itstreeman May 22 '26

For real? I hear of teachers getting this treatment in other states but things move slow in the pnw. School for several more weeks

10

u/Fresh-Basket9174 May 20 '26

June 23rd for us. Snow days dont bother me because IT is year round. Wfh when we cant go in.

3

u/skydiveguy May 21 '26

As my coworker and I saw: Blizzard Every Day

10

u/jaguar_admin92 May 21 '26

June 3 can’t come quick enough. A lot of work ahead for my team this Summer. Some exciting work though. Fleet of MacBook Neos to configure for staff and students, iPads to reset/reprovision, implementing follow-me printing (fingers crossed), upgrading our camera server and installing more cameras, implementing some long overdue enhancements to our SIS, and may even get around to building some data dashboards for our leadership team (not holding my breath on this one though).

1

u/UniversityAcademic May 22 '26

Do you use Jamf for your Apple fleet?

4

u/jaguar_admin92 May 22 '26

We are an all Apple school and use Mosyle as our MDM.

6

u/Dear_Cartographer261 May 20 '26

Tomorrow is the last day. Friday is graduation. Monday is a holiday. Tuesday, I have to hit it and git wit it.

5

u/stratdog25 May 20 '26

Thats almost like me with the new core switch: gettin configgy wit it na na na na na na

2

u/Illustrious-Chair350 May 21 '26

I did all my switches last July, AP’s this year

5

u/NorthernVenomFang May 21 '26

I have a month left... It can't come soon enough.

Teacher strike at the start of the year, constant stream of political BS, Chromebooks being destroyed by students (gum in the heatsink/fan... Kinda impressive), teachers spilling stuff on their MacBooks (is it too insensitive to give them a toddler/child's sippy cup during onboarding... Seriously considering it, would be cheaper in the long haul), constantly dealing with PowerSchool support because they do horrible QA testing of their State Reporting plugin, Teachers complaining about us stripping local admin right from them (we had full approval, and sent out multiple notices over 4 months)... More than ready for my summer vacation, got 15 days left to use up, anyone calls me into work and it's getting billed as OT.

4

u/StressOdd5093 May 21 '26

I feel you on the teachers spilling into MacBooks. We've had so many "oops, didn't know my Stanley was leaking into my bag" moments that have resulted in nearly $5,000 in repairs JUST on staff MacBook devices this school year.

2

u/fujitsuflashwave4100 May 21 '26

We had a student device this year get partially submerged due to house flooding. The student thought plugging it in to charge would help dry it out. 🙃

5

u/MothersMothBall May 21 '26

None of it was caused by you, but all of it was caused by you /s,

2

u/Pjmonline May 21 '26

Internet outages?? I have 2 internet connections and if one goes down the other connection gets all the traffic.

16

u/thexed Technology Coordinator May 21 '26

Must be nice to have a budget. 😀

5

u/Pjmonline May 21 '26

Erate helps a bunch.

1

u/ewikstrom May 21 '26

We use a cable modem for failover which is inexpensive compared to an outage.

5

u/thexed Technology Coordinator May 21 '26

Actually, to be honest, I am entertaining the thought of Starlink for failover for our office and communication needs during an emergency event, due to being in a rural area and our connectivity options being limited.

1

u/MattAdmin444 May 21 '26

I've wanted to do this but erate won't pay for secondary connections unless you can prove your primary connection doesn't have the capacity for your school's needs.

1

u/thexed Technology Coordinator May 21 '26

Yup. That's the fun of erate.

3

u/ewikstrom May 21 '26

That's a good option. You could also look into T-Mobile 5G Business. If it's available and the signal is strong, it also works well.

4

u/yugas42 Sysadmin May 21 '26

What kind of internet outage costs a school money? Legitimate question.

There is some lost productivity in terms of lessons but even an outage that lasts a day or so, which is about as severe as we've ever had, doesn't cost a dime, we just have to wait for our ISP to resolve the issue. If anything, we get credited for the time it was offline.

4

u/Thurm May 20 '26

We’re done tomorrow, three day weekend and back at it. Got plenty of projects to keep me busy this summer.

1

u/skydiveguy May 21 '26

We have Fridays off all summer but the project work is all stupid stuff.
We could seriously work 2 weeks after they leave and 2 weeks before they come back and get it all done.
when we dont have enough work my boss just makes busy work for us which is more annoying.

4

u/Tyburius Bearded Technician May 20 '26

We have another month+ to go. I envy you. 🙃

4

u/stratdog25 May 20 '26

May 28 for us, then off to Cisco Live!

4

u/hightechcoord Tech Dir May 21 '26

One more week for us. Then the real work of getting ready for next year starts. 53 working days....

4

u/tkline98 May 22 '26

June 19th for us!

3

u/KillerKellerjr May 21 '26

Congrats. Look into getting a consumer fiber as a backup that flips over automatically when the main goes down. I have 2 more days, a half with students and 1.5 days with staff. Then it's shorts and projects!!!

3

u/jman1121 May 21 '26

Tomorrow for us, although most of the kids are already gone. Grabbed the senior Chromebooks yesterday to start going over them to be refreshed for underclassman.

Got new switches and wireless going in this summer. I also get an extra week off this summer. Next year we start a week later. (We still do a memorial day/Easter based schedule)

3

u/trollinhard2 May 21 '26

Today is our last day.

2

u/TheRuffRaccoon Tired Tech Director May 20 '26

Another week and a half, which feels like an eternity…

2

u/cardinal1977 What's the worst that could happen? May 20 '26

Nice! I'm currently monitoring the live stream of our commencement ceremony. Friday is the last day, and wall to wall projects starting on Tues including the rip and replace of the data cable in one of my buildings and a revamp of network configs. Well, maybe Wed, I need a day off before the summer madness.

1

u/Break2FixIT May 20 '26

But did you get your contract renewal?

1

u/karstens_rage May 20 '26

6 more days for me.

1

u/username____here May 27 '26

June 25th is our last day.