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An independent audit of the Bexley school district's technology department revealed several problems and resulted in the school board firing network manager Curtis Mason last week. A review of the report reveals an inside perspective on how poor communication between district Information Technology(IT) staff and users of the school district's computers and instability of those computers have caused a high level of frustration among all parties involved.

The audit, performed by Louis Haskell of Dublin-based Haskell Technologies, is a review of the management of the IT department, not technical issues, with a focus on what changes are needed to transition the district's computer systems from a Windows environment to a Linux environment. Linux is an open-source operating system. These operating systems are built piece by piece by collaborating software developers who own their section of the code, and then agree to share their code with others in order to develop a technically free operating system.

Haskell declined to comment for this story.

Superintendent Michael Johnson said the audit cost $3,500.

Haskell interviewed 27 people, including students, teachers administrators and the five-person district IT staff for his report. He identified four major issues that contributed to the frustration in the district regarding technology: computer services are unstable, poor communication between technology users and the IT staff, a lack of user involvement in planning and a lack of rigor in technology support and planning.

The 12-page report does not cite interviewee's names, but it makes it clear that Haskell found serious problems in how the Bexley IT department dealt with teacher and student requests. "The IT department is not into solutions; they are into barriers," one interviewee said.

Almost all of the people interviewed said the communication between IT staff and users was on a one-way street, with students and teachers finding their reports of computer problems ignored. Many of the interviewees said that IT staff used security concerns as an irrational excuse to deny useful computer services, like flash drives to transport information between home and school.

The Bexley board of education acted quickly after receiving this report, voting unanimously to fire Mason on May 7. Mason said that he has retained legal counsel and cannot comment for this story.

The Haskell audit recommends that the district hire a Technology Director who will lead the technology and computer work for the district. It recommends that this new district employee have a computer science or Management of Information Systems degree and five to 10 years of IT experience.

Johnson said he has 15 qualified applicants for the Technology Director job and hopes to recommend a candidate for the position to the board of education in June. Computer Site Columbus has been contracted to run the district's computer system in the interim, Johnson said.

The report recommends that the person have a vision for the future of the district, posses strong people skills in order to immediately address the existing communication problems for the IT department and the ability to budget, track and implement plans for improvement in the district.

A key report finding is that there is no coherent plan to transition computers to Linux from Windows ME. All 55 computers at Montrose Elementary currently run Linux and administrators said they want to complete the transfer by 2010.

"All interviewees, including IT staff, indicated that there is no written plan for the migration of computers to the Linux operating environment. When asked what they understood the plan to be, the answerers were inconsistent, wide and varied," according to the report.

Some Bexley teachers have complained that they were left out of the decision to switch to Linux and are apprehensive about leaving an all-Windows environment. "I was told that the move to Linux would solve all my problems. I believe that this will not address the core issues here. I fear it may make them worse," one of the interviewees told Haskell.

"I do not have true issues with open source applications. Maybe they will work, I don't know. But I was not involved in any decision-making process. New applications are just being dictated to us and I am very uncomfortable without testing these programs first," another interviewee said.

District officials have blamed a 50 percent cut in technology spending for the 2004- 2005 school year for some of the problems. Voters rejected an operating levy in 2003, and administrators chose to cut the technology budget in half instead of cutting money for teachers. Because of this funding cut, officials said, they could not replace aging computers when necessary.

Next year's technology budget is $280,000, bringing funding back to the 2003-2004 level.