Passing the Torch: A New Chapter for the K -12 Tech Podcast

• Zach

Welcome everybody back to the K-12 Tech Podcast. I was our host for the K-12 Tech Podcast for a few years and was doing a pretty good job staying on top of that, doing, you know, 1 or 2 a month, for about a year, year and a half. But the good parts of business is growing and everything else is, unfortunately… I just did not have the bandwidth to continue that on. I am joined by my very favorite guest, Chantell, who… we have known each other for a long time. And, you know, really kind of getting back to the spacing from the last episodes to now. It really… have had a lot of growth. We’ve opened up, probably since the last podcast about three more repair locations across the US and, a lot of, software development on Rocket. And we’re getting ready to actually move our office here to a much, much larger facility about three miles down the road. So all of those things have led to not staying on top of it. And, one of the very, very exciting things we’re going to talk about this podcast is Chantell coming on board with us as someone who has been an unbelievable partner on the school side, for the last eight years? I think it’s been eight years. And, one of the main things that I’m going to be handing off is going to be the podcast to Chantell who has some experience, but also can speak way more in depth from the school side. And then now that she’s on our team can kind of bridge some of that gap. So yeah, that’s what today’s episode is about.

• Chantell

Awesome. Well, thanks for having me, Zach. Thanks for inviting me to be a part of the bigger, larger K-12 Tech family. And I’m really excited to be hosting the podcast moving forward.

• Zach

Yeah. And we’ve had some really great guests. And, you know, from… kind of it’s it’s starting point, like, it’s been awesome to be able to talk to a lot of tech directors and people in this industry who have a lot like a wide variety of different specializations and stuff. And I’m kind of excited to see, like, what else is coming up? Because obviously, the education technology world is changing consistently. And, you know, I’m obviously on the vendor side and I’m, you know, I’ve been fortunate enough to be connected with people who know a lot of things, but I’m excited to see what Chantell can bring kind of from her experience for 20 years, so. The first question, Chantell obviously, is you were a teacher for 20 years. What made you willing to leave your district after being a teacher and a technology director and, coming over and, like, working with us?

• Chantell

Gosh, that’s such a great question. And, you know, I know I’m not the first educator to make that transition over to working with a partner on the partner side of things, and certainly not the last. But, you know, it wasn’t necessarily a super easy decision, something, you know, I’d had a few offers over the last few years from some different companies that they… maybe wanted to offer for me to come work with them. But I, I really felt really strongly about if I was going to make that transition. It had to be with, company and product and service that I truly believed in. It had to be someone that I had partnered with, and it had to be somewhere where I could feel like I was still making a difference and an impact. I’ve been very fortunate to be involved in a lot of professional growth through the Indiana CTO Council, through CoSN, through Project Unicorn, and the Ed-Fi Alliance. And each one of those times, just being able to expand my impact to help more technology directors, to help more leaders, to help more students. And I really viewed coming over to K-12 Tech as another one of those opportunities. How can I help more CTOs, help more teachers and students, and how can I broaden the impact that I know K-12 Tech can bring to a school district? Because I’ve experienced it myself.

• Zach

Yeah. And I think that’s like a really good point. So, you know, I’m not saying one is better than the other. I think it’s more of like your personal like conviction on like certain topics and stuff. But when it comes to running a business, obviously, in EdTech, there’s a whole bunch of different flavors. And how you do that, it might be calling hundreds of people a day or, you know, emailing all of the time. And, really, our business, I would say probably 80% of our customers have come from customer referrals. And, you know, kind of one of the hot topics in education technology, and I see this stuff on LinkedIn fairly regularly is like, how did you get my personal cell phone number? It’s the first week of school. Why are you emailing me to sell me things, right? And that’s never been, that’s never really been how we go about, like, getting new customers and working with them. And, that’s kind of why when, we were looking for this position in the company is our goal is how can we add as much value at the district level where it just makes sense to make the move over and, and utilize us and, and there’s also a lot of things like we’re not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing and search engine optimization. We really utilize a lot of those funds that would go towards that to be more of that personable, interactive, in the weeds with our technology directors and spending a lot more time on that. And then also, Rocket development and other things. And that’s also what’s hard. So, in the midst of like looking at a few other opportunities, obviously you had your pick of the litter, where you could have gone, but kind of.. I kind of want to hear, like, your experience with us. Like, what was that like on the tech director side? And then what kind of, like, was enticing about maybe coming to work with us over someone else?

• Chantell

I remember being a CTO, and, you know, I wasn’t very experienced. So maybe a couple years in and I had inherited a lot of systems, a lot of vendors, a lot of products, and I really hadn’t chosen them. So sorting through all of that in those early days was a daunting task. And I had inherited repairs that kind of had been bought and sold several times. So when our district first went 1 to 1 at some grade levels, we actually had a storefront here in town and someone would come pick up devices every week and repair them and then bring them back next week and pick up more broken devices. And that worked really well for our district. And this was the early days of 1 to 1 too, so that our district really enjoyed that support. They felt like the community could support that. They knew where those devices were going. They knew that person, in town, and they felt like they could trust that solution. Well, it turns out that in the midst of my becoming the CTO and the couple years that passed after that, you know, that person had sold the business out to someone else who had sold the business to someone else, who had transferred it to someone else. And it seemed like every time we were handed off to someone else, you know, farther away in a different state, we had less and less contact with those people, and our community started questioning, you know, especially when we started running low on devices. Our loaner fleet was low because we had so many repairs. And that wasn’t just our students and our teachers fault. We actually had some faulty Chromebooks, that eventually the manufacturer replaced the entire fleet at our high school. We had screws coming loose on the inside. It was crashing motherboards. I mean, we were going through 30 or 40 a week, I think, at one point. So just so many devices out for repair. And I was looking for another solution. We were also… That other vendor we were working with had a minimum device repair number. So no matter what was wrong with the device, it was costing me at least $100 every time I sent the device in. We didn’t have any accidental damage protection. We didn’t have any warranty outside of that initial year after the purchase. So we were being nickel and dimed a lot and our bills were rising. So I’m looking for another solution, and I heard about K-12 Tech. So, what I remember you all had, a little gathering, lunchtime gathering for CTOs, and it was led by a former CTO, former superintendent. And, they just really talked through, like, what is the process like? What are your pain points? How can we help? And we didn’t switch that day. It was several months later, some more discussion. But really kind of what sealed the deal to make that jump. That leap in the very beginning was when I described exactly what I’ve told you, that the pain point was our community felt disconnected from the process. They felt like they couldn’t trust the people who were repairing the devices. The parents wanted an option, which we had been offering, to buy some coverage for that device, unlimited repairs, because the school district wasn’t purchasing any accidental damage protection. So the parents wanted to take on that cost and pay one fee and not have to worry about repairing if accidents happened a couple times during the school year. And I remember talking about it with the K-12 Tech team and they said, we’ve got we will figure this out. Not only will we figure this out, we will come to your school district. I know you have six school buildings. I know that they all have open houses at different times. Someone from our team will be there. A real person in person to meet the parents and to reassure them that this is going to be different. And that really happened and it really changed the way our community felt about our 1 to 1 program, our repair process, and everything else and it’s that little personal touch. It was one initial contact and, you know, maybe 2 or 3 minutes total of talking to someone. That trust was built in that small moment.

• Zach

Yeah, I remember that day, because we’re actually in South Bend and you and your team came and I talked to you all about that, and that was kind of like, you know, we’ve grown a lot since then as a business. And, I also don’t like to sugarcoat anything, like, are we a perfect business? By no means. Like, we have problems that come up, but, like, and we’re going to get into this later on the podcast. We want to know those problems so we can get better. And that’s the other thing too, is like refining and better communication, better quality of repair. But that’s been kind of our focus is kind of device as a service, right. So when you’re a tech director you’ve got a million things. You’ve got networking, you’ve got, you’ve got security, you’ve got, rollout, you’ve got all of these things getting new devices in, getting old devices out and our goal was to take the end user device model and be able just to be one vendor that takes care of the new ones coming in, giving you good inventory levels and, and accurate reporting, maintaining them for the life of the device at one single expense per year. And a very important thing here is how many times have schools bought an unlimited program that’s very limited? It’s like, oh, well, that’s not covered. That’s not covered. And there are exclusions to our ADP extended warranty, but they’re like vandalism, you know, you know, catastrophic damage, things that are very typical. But I have never once had a school where it’s like, hey, we’re just not going to do these repairs. We have done them even like when it’s like, hey, this is kind of a gray area. We’ve just gone ahead and have completed those because that’s what a school pays for. And that’s been really that’s been a conviction of mine is I want the schools to know what they’re getting with this. And it might be maybe a little bit more expensive. But when you look at the administrative cost of other programs, shipping things out and doing all those things, it’s much, much more expensive and a lot more time spent. So, and yeah, you’ve been wonderful to work with because if there ever was a problem, if something was missed, you’d be like, hey guys, you missed this. And then we would fix the process and then communicate, hey, this is going to be resolved next week.

• Chantell

Yeah. And it wasn’t just like that one off. It was like, oh okay, here’s how we’re going to change the system so that we’re trying to prevent this happening again. And I think another thing that, you know, really stands out in my mind about the process of being the technology director working with K-12 Tech is, you know, there were times when I mean, there are things beyond your control on the on the partner side, there are, you know, chip shortages and parts shortages and maybe a device is out for longer than expected because the part just isn’t available. You always communicated that to us. You always let us know why we’re waiting. And then we could relay that to families. And we had enough devices. I mean, there have been times when I remember you all replaced devices because you could not get parts and they should have been covered. It just was a shortage. So always trying to make it right by us, you know, that handful of devices you couldn’t get a part for? You made it up to us. So we weren’t without devices in the hands of students. 

• Zach

Yeah, exactly. And for those who are, like, listening, don’t know what K-12 Tech does in general, you know, really we’re new device, white glove prep. So you can, you can, actually set up your schools for deployment for the beginning of the year. We do the maintenance, so repair, ADP extended warranty, out of warranty repair. We’re also an authorized service provider for Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, and HP. So even if they’re in warranty under that first year, we can still process those warranty claims at no cost to the district. And kind of like, our big like differentiator is, local pick up and drop off. So about 90% of our accounts, we’ve got ten service centers across the United States, and we’ve got 13 of these little school buses that go around and pick up from the actual school districts. And our goal is, our goal with all of that, including Rocket, is to make the easiest, most seamless process for districts. So it’s like it’s a set it and forget it kind of mentality. Hey, I know I do these things with K-12 Tech and these things are taken care of throughout the year so that I can level out my staff, spend and time spend so it’s not peaked during those really heavy times. And kind of our goal, we’re going all in on that. Our goal is to have about 25 service centers across the United States in the next three years, so that we can offer that in a much wider, offering so.

• Chantell

Zach, you were talking a little bit about all the things that K-12 Tech does, and you mentioned Rocket a few times. For those listening who maybe aren’t familiar yet, tell them more about what Rocket is and how that came to be.

• Zach

That’s a great question. So probably, 14 years ago, I had, really right when I got started, and 1 to 1 was growing and it went from a computer lab like basis for end user devices to students having a device. There was a large need to have some sort of asset management, and incident management software. So there was a few out there that existed. We had trial run a bunch of them and they were either way too expensive or they were very restrictive and getting development done was hard. So we had partnered with a few other ones and they’re good companies. But it got to the point where we had grown so much that we needed something that we could offer to the school districts. And as we went through that process to develop Rocket, and we started that almost five years ago, we just decided, you know what, we’re going to design our own and we’re going to make it free to all school districts. We’re not going to sell data. We’re not going to data mine. It was truly just this is our gift to the community. And if they ever do want to use us for any services, it makes it really easy. So Rocket was finished about four years ago, and the first version of it was good. But what you realize and what I’ve learned from software development is the easiest part is actually building the first version. The hardest part is all of the little things that need to be improved. So we’ve spent a lot of time and we’ve invested a lot of money to build it to where it is today. And, we currently have about 1,800 school districts that are using it in some form or fashion. So it’s really taken off. And the simplest way to to put it out there is it’s a full asset incident and help desk management. You can use it for technology tickets, maintenance tickets and it’s a really solid, cloud based, secure site that you can use. It’s very quick. It’s very user friendly. And that’s one of the things I’m the most proud of. So it’s just very easy. You can create a device ticket by scanning the barcode or QR code, enter the serial number and you can create a ticket in 10 seconds. You can mass create tickets. It’s got Google Workspace integration SSO for both Google and Microsoft. And you can put anything you want in there. And yeah, of those districts, there’s a ton of them we don’t actually do business with. And honestly, I love that. I think that’s a testament of what we’re trying to do. as a business is offer value before we receive anything. So yeah.

• Chantell

And I can tell you as a customer, I remember some of those earlier days, there were some different systems in play. And I remember giving feedback, well, this isn’t really working for us because… Or it would be really nice if the solution could do… And it felt like you took all of that feedback and were able to create something, like you said, even in the initial version, like very usable and very much solving the problems that people told you about. 

• Zach

Yeah. And what I will encourage. So like it does feel like, a lot of people have heard about Rocket now. Like, I’m sure there’s probably 75% of the industry that the school districts have not heard of it. But if you were one of the early ones that had got on there and looked at it and be like, oh, this doesn’t really fit where we’re at, or it’s not quite where we want it to be. I would encourage you to give it another shot, because the amount that we’ve improved over the last even two years or year is pretty substantial. And it’s really, it’s a testament to the people who have given us feedback of things to improve. And, I’m really proud of where it’s at now, and we’re still  pouring a ton of time and effort into it, as that’s like one of our main focuses is how can we add more value to the industry.

• Chantell

And so you do and we used most of these services when I was in the school district. So you do everything from the initial deployment, white glove, purchasing devices, the accidental damage repair, you all do warranty repairs, you’re a service provider for all the major manufacturers there. But then it doesn’t stop there, right? It also goes to the buyback and…

• Zach

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So like once again connecting the dots from the start. So, a lot of schools buy them. You can buy devices from us. You can buy devices from anybody. We do the white glove like full prep. We do a lot of customization too. So there’s a lot of schools we will actually set up and deliver to the individual buildings and box up by classroom. Some schools that want to do summer refresh if they’re with us for the ADP extended warranty, they collect the devices at the end of the school year, we will clean off all the stickers and we will do all those things so they’re prepped for the next school year. And that’s not a heavy burden on your staff over the summer. And then also on the ITAD side, the end of life. So bring it in and then give you credit towards your next cycle. And, you know, also being a good steward of those things and making sure they’re going down to the right, the right streams and the data is being taken care of, responsibly. So yeah, that’s our goal. Like we’re staying in that in that field, in education of like, how can we make this as seamless as possible. And it’s and also how can we work inside of the school’s current budget? I think that’s the other thing too. We’re a small business. We have about 125 employees. But we’re growing pretty rapidly. But we can get really creative. There’s not, like, a whole long list of people who are approving things. We have a very, really good, tight team that can make quick decisions and be creative to work with where schools are. 

• Chantell

And I think that’s key. Like one of the differences between someone who’s just trying to sell you something and someone that you can trust is the willingness to listen and work with, you know, whatever is in your control. Not everything’s in your control, but whatever is in your control. How do we work together to come to a solution?

• Zach

Yeah, absolutely. And every district is different. Every district’s budget is different. They might have really good internal capabilities under certain things. And we try to meet districts where they are and then help them along the way to build out really solid programs that are more automated and that are more efficient. So that’s kind of our goal for the long term.

• Chantell

All right. Well, Zach, I know that probably if people have heard of K-12 Tech and are not listening for the first time, and a lot of people know me because I’ve been so involved in professional organizations, they’re probably wondering, how did the idea of me joining the K-12 Tech team form?

• Zach

That’s a great question. So you actually have always been, an option of just like, hey, if she ever did decide to leave education and her path ever took that way, I was like, I would love for her to come work with us because you’re an extremely hard worker. You care well, which is really important to our company culture and working with our customers. You understand it. You’re a customer that said, hey, how can I get more of this? How can I automate more of this? Right. And, not all tech directors are like that. I think there’s sometimes of, like a, if they push things off to other vendors, they feel like maybe they’re losing control. But, you know, I believe, like, creating good systems and partners and processes is, it does give you actually more control because you kind of, have a really good stack of systems that work together. So, and I’m not one I… and we’ve talked I didn’t really we didn’t, I didn’t recruit you out of education. We’re just we’re, we’re friends, you know, and I’m talking to you and you’re like, hey, I think I’m kind of as a tech director, I’m kind of looking for the next thing. And really, I prompt and I’d be like, hey, if you are, if you are ever thinking about leaving, I love to talk to you. And that was basically it. Right? Because there is kind of this fine line of… I’m not saying it has been done, but there’s like kind of like, oh, I spend a lot of money with this vendor that I’m going to go to them. And it’s not really like a clean break. And that’s another thing is like just integrity of just like, hey, this is not like a gray area. I want to be black and white on. I would love to have you if this is the move you’re going to make. But not like a, there’s never like, a quid pro quo or something. I’m just like, oh, well, if you do this amount  of business with us, we’ll hire you. You know, it was, it was really, we truly wanted you because of, because of your integrity and because of your care for people. Because that is how we work with customers. We want to care well for them. We want them to feel we want our tech directors and tech leaders that we work with to feel comfortable to bring up an issue. Because that really is what builds, that that really is what builds a really deep partnership is like, hey, the second you see a problem, let us know so that we can have a good solution. And I have seen it in the past where it’ll boil up and then it becomes a big problem. And we didn’t know, we thought everything was good. Right? So yeah, this whole thing I appreciate, appreciate about you and your team is, we would have good feedback. We would fix it and then we would give feedback. Hey, this has been fixed, thank you. So. I know that’s a long answer of why I wanted you to work for us. I think it kind of covers a lot of the bases.

• Chantell

Yeah, but it is really true. I mean, I was kind of, you know, there are different circumstances going on, different time of my life. Just kind of looking around, exploring some options. And just because Zach said, oh, I’d love for you to come work with us. Like, it didn’t like it wasn’t an instant or a yes, I’ll do that today. And we had several conversations and like really like a lot of thought went into, you know, what does this mean? What does this look like? You know, is this a good fit? And when all of those things could be answered, you know, that’s what, because I felt like this is some place where I can care for people, and where I can still make an impact and a difference for people. You know, people get into education because they want to serve. I mean, they want to serve others. They want to, you know, help develop as a leader, not just the students in my classrooms.But I wanted to develop my team. And if that meant developing them out of my team and into a, you know, a tech director or CTO role somewhere else, that actually happened to me. And that’s something to celebrate. It’s not something to be upset about. So K-12 Tech can give me that same, you know, opportunity to develop the leaders, to work with them, to help them solve their problems. That’s what made it a good fit for me on my side.

• Zach

I 100% agree and like that’s the same thing, too. We’ve had a few employees who have actually worked for us… Were working closely in education who left and are now tech leaders, you know, and I love that. I feel like that’s a success in my book. It’s never fun losing a great employee.

• Chantell

Right.

• Zach

But there’s a reality of like, I want what’s best for you. And I do think, like as we talked through a lot of those things, with your family and what you’re passionate about, it made a lot of sense. And then also, what we needed too. You know, with the podcast and stuff. I’ve always been passionate about it. But unfortunately, as the business has grown, I’ve been pulled kind of in many, many different directions. And, I would get asked every EdTech conference I was at like when’s the next episode coming out? I’m like I’m sorry I haven’t gotten to it. And, then also just like another person that can be present in the public too. I do a lot of speaking engagements and stuff at conferences, and that’s unfortunately becoming harder as well. So and, looking forward to kind of handing off the torch in that way, for us to really do a good job communicating about what we do and what’s different about us. And there’s a lot of things that are very, very different about what we do than our competitors do. And, really excited to kind of get that messaging out in a very clear way. And also kind of what we talked about is this podcast, you know, we’re talking a lot about K-12 Tech right now because it has to do with this, you know, kind of origin story about us. But it’s like the K-12 Tech Podcast was never about K-12 Tech, like our business. It was about these very important topics that are going on in the industry. And, that is like the one thing I’m very convicted about is like, you know, being a giver. And you know what? That comes back around a lot of times. And, that definitely is the culture here at K-12 Tech, so.

• Chantell

Yeah. So, you know, if you’re listening, you know, now in my new role at K-12 Tech, you know, I hope that what you’re going to get from me on these podcasts is just more of that, like what is happening, what is important, what do we need to know about? So, I’ve got a lot of ideas. I’m really excited. I’ve reached out to a few people already, but if you’re listening, I do want you to know that I would love to hear those ideas. Like, what’s bothering you? What’s keeping you up at night? What do you still have questions about? Because this is for you, the listeners, the people out in the field doing the work with teachers, with tech staffs, with students, and we want it to be the best that it can for you. So one thing I’m going to start doing as we run through these podcasts, we’re going to, you know, have the main content, and then we’re going to do a kind of a rapid fire round.

• Zach

I love it.

• Chantell

This time, since, you know, Zach’s the previous host, I’m the host going forward, we’re going to ask each other a few rapid fire questions. So, Zach, do you want me to ask you first?

• Zach

Yes.

• Chantell

Okay. So, okay, one word you’d use to describe the best district partners you’ve worked with?

• Zach

The best district partners are ones that will bring us problems in their district. It might not be with us, but just like, hey, I have this problem. Can you work with me to help me solve this? District partner… district partnerships that are that bring us in to, like, help kind of from the ground up to really build a system. And that’s what I’ve realized. Our customers that are the most happy with us are the ones that are doing not just repairs, but they’re doing a lot of different portions of it. And I feel like that’s where we make the biggest difference, because sometimes we’re just selling parts or we’re doing other things, but maybe it’s 1 or 2 different things. But, the partners that really want to get ingrained and utilize a lot of the free services and things that we do at no cost, those have been the deepest partnerships by far.

• Chantell

Yeah. So maybe communicative. That’s a great like one word. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve gotten as a founder?

• Zach

I think the best piece of advice, and I’ve kind of alluded to it a few times, but, it’s givers gain, so it’s you and I always say this and I talk to my, my, my account executive staff about this. School districts are being sold to all the time. They can smell it when you’re in a conference and there’s a really aggressive sales person, they can smell it and they don’t want to work with somebody like that. And I say, find a way to add value without asking for anything in return, and that will come back to you. It might not be in sales, it might be from a referral, it might be from a really good conversation, a good idea. But I really do believe in, givers gain trying to provide as much value as possible. And that is how you can really build up your business so I thought that was really good advice. 

• Chantell

That’s great advice. And then finally, what’s one prediction that you have one goal or prediction for K-12 Tech in this school year?

• Zach

So I think one of the biggest things happening in the industry right now, there’s a lot of policy  coming out on device usage. Budgets, obviously the Covid devices are now on their fourth, fifth some of the later ones will be on their sixth year. So, this is like one thing I talk about in the, in the, sessions that I do is there are so many things that I could lead districts on to make more money. Like, so many things. Hey, you should buy new devices. You should do all of these things. But, I do believe, the next couple of years, it’s going to be really getting into, how with my new budget that I have post-Covid in my environment, with our end user devices. How do I get as much life out of them as possible? And I think that’s going to be a big thing to work through. What do I do with my old devices? What value am I missing out? I think there’s going to be a lot more strategy around that at a district level of how can I maximize and continue to have a really good product for my students and teachers inside of the new budget that I have? And that’s one thing I’m passionate about working with districts on.

• Chantell

Awesome. Yeah, and I agree, that’s going to be huge for school districts, for technology directors to figure out in this new funding era that we’re living in, because we want to keep those one to ones. We want to keep devices in the hands of students. How do we make that happen? How do we find a partner that does?

• Zach

Yeah.

• Chantell

Awesome. All right. So you’re going to ask me just a few rapid fire questions.

• Zach

Yes. What is one word you’d use to describe the best partners you’ve worked with as a district leader?

• Chantell

The one word is genuine, and you hit the nail on the head Zach. You can smell it when people aren’t genuine and when they’re just trying to sell you something, or when they’re trying to hard sell you, you know, genuinely get to know someone as a person. Like, what do they like? What’s their district like? What are their problems? What are they… Do they have kids? You know, do they have a spouse? Tell me more about your life and we can have further conversations later.

• Zach

Yeah, I love that. And, yeah, that’s like a really, you know, because ultimately businesses have to grow. So they have to sell. But I do think the EdTech industry, working with obviously public entities and stuff is just like they need a partner, like they need someone that isn’t just going to self-serve for themselves, but like, what’s going to be the best outcome for the district. But I love that. Okay. Favorite story of device troubleshooting as an educator?

• Chantell

Oh my goodness. So this one will go down in the history books. I think it was my second year as the technology director, and our librarians in our buildings, our media specialists, handle our devices at the building level. The check in, check out, distribution, bringing them in for troubleshooting, and then sending them in for repairs. So we had this building, we had a couple of devices that had not bed bugs… ants. They had ants in them. And we could not get rid of these ants for anything. So the media specialist had put these devices in like plastic bags and put them in like the mechanical room of the school building, where it got warm and kept them in there for pretty much an entire school year. And then we went to go get them out and get them, see if we could get them ready. If the ants were dead, and we could get them ready to go back in the hands of students right before school started. So she and I are… have like, goggles on and like, shower caps and canned air. And we’re in the front yard of the school building and we’re like, blowing out all of these dead ants out of these devices. We looked hilarious, I’m sure, to anyone driving by. But you know what? We got those ants out of those devices. No more alive ants came out of them that we know of. We checked several times, put them back in baggies to make sure there weren’t any running around in there. So that was pretty funny.

• Zach

Yeah. The amount of bedbugs, cockroaches, like, all sorts of those things. And just like a little piece of advice, if that’s what you got going on. And I don’t know, not every technology department has one of these. But, what we will do when we get those is we will actually, take them. We have a specific deep freezer. We’ll put them in a plastic bag and we’ll put them in a deep freezer for like a week or two to try to, like, kill them off. But that’s one way you can do it. But I have a story. This was probably 7 or 8 years ago. A district had cloth cases like the always-on cases and, they brought them in over the summer, and, they didn’t know that 1 of, 1 or 2 of the devices had bedbugs and the whole closet got infected. All the cases. And we had to help the district navigate through that because we had to, like, kind of basically do, like a refurbish of a lot of the devices. So just be very careful while you’re doing that. And that is one, always-on fabric cases can be great. But that is one thing I’ve seen that they do that they can cause like bedbug stuff to kind of accelerate. So that’s an interesting story. What’s one thing district leaders assume about vendors that’s just wrong?

• Chantell

Oh, this is a great question. And I think I maybe when I first took this role, I didn’t really understand, you know, I came from a classroom to the district office. And as a small district, we didn’t have a lot of partners. We had a lot of vendors who sold things to us. And because we were small, people didn’t stick around. We didn’t have a dedicated relationship manager or account manager. So I kind of did have that mindset that I think a lot of technology directors still have that, you know, it’s us versus them or, you know, I’ve jokingly like, you know, people say, oh, she went to the dark side, you know, the vendor side of things instead of the education side. It’s not us versus them. It’s not the dark side and the light side. It’s not, you know, we’re not the Jedi and the Sith here. We really have to talk about this. We as school districts have needs that we can’t fulfill internally. And that’s why we need partners. The partners exist to fulfill those needs. And when we work together, when you find the partners who will work with you, that’s when things work best for teachers and students. So you know just getting rid of that, us versus them mindset.

• Zach

Yeah. Yeah, I think I think that like you said like the genuineness but also the communication of like, I don’t like this. I think one of the biggest issues I’m seeing in our industry currently is the rapid turnover of account executives. Like, I’m, I’m on LinkedIn all the time. It’s like, oh, this person’s here now. They’re there. And I’ve talked with customers. They’re like, well, I was with this company and I’ve had four different reps in the last four months. And that’s hard because like you, you know, there really is it’s kind of like being married in a way. Or it’s like, hey, like, these are things I like. These are things I don’t like. This is how I like to see it. And when you have that rapid turnover, you’re you’re having to like relearn with each rep and a lot of things can fall through the cracks. So that’s something we really do try to have a really stable like offering. And then also just like the back up too, because people have vacation time and stuff, we want to make sure things aren’t falling through the cracks. But yeah, that’s a really good one.

• Chantell

All right. And so we’ll try to end with some practical takeaways here as we kind of wrap it up. You heard a lot about the origins of K-12 Tech and how it’s really grown over the years, how I’ve been a long time customer and I’ve witnessed from the district side a lot of that growth that Zach gave us some insight into and then why I would make the leap after 20 years in education, to come to work with K-12 Tech. So a lot of it just boils down to relationships. You know, there’s a difference between a vendor and a partner and that works on both sides of this. So Zach, what do you think is one thing a district leader can ask a vendor to find out quickly whether they’re a true partner or not.

• Zach

I think asking a vendor of just like, hey, I’m not ready to do business with you now, but these are my problems. Can you help me figure this out? So it’s kind of basically kind of like checking a little bit, like, are you just interested in a quick sale turnaround time, or are you willing to help me to build the relationship, to actually build a partnership? I think that’s a really good question. Say hey, I’m not ready to purchase right now, but I could use some help figuring this out. And then also be like, hey, I think another great question is, hey, if they weren’t, if I wasn’t going to go with you, which one of your competitors would you go with? I think kind of them being willing, it’s like, hey, like they have a good offering on these things. So kind of just like people can be so biased on their own product and, there are some school districts where I’ve been like, hey, based on your current environment, I think this is actually going to be a better experience for you because you’re kind of wanting one single thing, right? So, see if that, if that, potential partner is willing to help even when there’s not an immediate upside for them.

• Chantell

I think that’s huge advice because, you know, a lot of times school districts aren’t making a purchase quickly. A lot of times it takes a while. It takes a while to get budgets in places where they can or to end a relationship with one vendor before you can move on to another. But if that if they’re a partner, they can talk with you through those problems, point you in the right direction. Maybe it’s a problem that you don’t solve. Do you know who does? Do you know a district who’s solving that problem? Well, can you get them in touch with a district leader? Those things are huge value adds that really take that relationship from vendor to partner quickly. That’s great advice.

• Zach

And do they follow up on that like, hey, you know what, I’m not sure I’m going to look into it and get back to you. But I think that shows a lot of willingness to build a relationship. So my question to you, if an EdTech leader wants to build the kind of partnership we’ve talked about on this podcast, what’s one thing that they could start doing tomorrow and this week.

• Chantell

This is such a great question because sometimes I hate to say it… technology directors, CTOs, sometimes we’re the problem, sometimes we’re the barrier between taking something from a vendor relationship to a partnership. And I think one thing that you can do tomorrow is be genuine yourself. I mean, you don’t want to,  you know, reveal something that might be sensitive or a cyber security risk, but be genuine about what are your problems, where are your priorities? If you have something that works for you, don’t pretend that you don’t. Be upfront about that. Here’s what we’re doing right now. It works really well for us. Okay, then now’s not the right time. But because now’s not the right time, doesn’t mean that two years from now it might not be the right time or that, you know, a different account executive, as Zach said, comes in and, you know, things go south. Things change so rapidly. So being genuine and honest about what your priorities are, that lets the partner help you. If you try to hide what your priorities are or you aren’t honest about them, then there’s no way they can truly help you solve those problems.

• Zach

Yeah, that’s great feedback. And what agreed from our side too, of like giving people the opportunity to come into the world, you’re in, right. And the issues that you’re in and see like, hey, is this someone that’s kind of put in the time and giving them the opportunity to try and solve those problems? So what’s really exciting is you’re taking over the podcast. I’m excited to see what you do with it. So what can listeners expect kind of going forward? What’s kind of your cadence with it?

• Chantell

So I’m hoping to get out at least two podcasts a month. Maybe some bonuses if I get in-person with some people and get a chance to get some extra interviews in. But I’m hoping that I’ll help you solve your problems and cover topics that are relevant to the work you’re doing right now in your school district. To what’s coming legislatively our way and how we have to react to that. You know, the issues that are cropping up, how do we navigate this new funding? That almost every state is facing, you know, a reduction in funds right now. So about two times per month. I’d love to get topic ideas from all of you. I’d love to have you on as a guest. I want to do some more of the… if you’ve listened before, Zach’s done some origin stories episodes where we hear, you know, how did you become a technology director or a CTO? Because you don’t go to college thinking this is what you’re going to do. There’s no clear one way path here. So I’d love to hear your stories about how you got to be in this position and your background and how you got to be good at what you do. So hoping all of those things come true. The other thing that we’re going to be doing is, since you are, you know, getting some education by listening to this podcast, look for a Google form, because if you fill out that Google form and, you know, answer a couple of questions about what you’ve learned on this podcast and what you’re going to take away, maybe to try differently. We’ll send you PGPs, professional growth points or continuing education credits. And that way if you need to renew a teaching license or a CETL certification  or something else, you’ll have some of those hours banked just from listening to the podcast. So that’s super exciting coming up. And if you want to learn more, make a suggestion about a topic or you want to apply to be a guest yourself. You should go to the website. It’s, K12techrepairs.com. So pretty easy to get there. And we’ll also have the links here as you’re listening to the podcast, in the information. So reach out, we’d love to hear from you. I’d love to feature you and your ideas on an episode moving forward.

• Zach

Well thanks, Chantell I’m excited to see what you do and, just excited your passion, your passion for education technology and, just the insight you’re going to bring to the community. Like, a very tight knit community, which I appreciate, so.

• Chantell

Well, thank you. Looking forward to the future.