Technology

Information technology is perhaps more critical than electricity and water—if it goes down or is lost, schools can suffer far more than a few days of discomfort. COS provides comprehensive assessments of processes, practices, needs, and anticipated needs. We help deploy and integrate infrastructure and applications within budget and capable of keeping pace with ever-advancing technologies and school needs.

The COS team features seasoned technology directors with decades of experience at a wide array of institutions from independent schools to large corporations. We ensure you have a fail-proof, growth-oriented technology system to optimize data sharing, data security, and application synchronicity as well as ensure against human error, server crashes and system outages. We find the bugs in your system—know whether faculty disclose sensitive data or if students can change their grades.

How can we help?

Case Study

A small independent school’s IT director of over 20 years had long been the trusted, reliable, and frugal-minded overseer of the school’s servers, network, email, databases and other technology databases. He had been storing the backups in the basement of his own home unbeknownst to the Head of School and Board.

COS Solution

Wanting to keep this loyal employee, the Head of School and Board hired COS to help “modernize” the IT infrastructure of the school. COS met with the entire leadership team to analyze data storage, transmissions, overlapping needs with a pre-visit assessment questionnaire followed-by a day of on-site intensive work with the leadership team.

OUTCOME: COS helped implement a financially prudent modernization of the IT systems and data management for all departments and school functions—and the IT Director no longer has a server in his basement (which, by the way was within the flood zone).

“Hands down, this was a top-tier day of presentations. Ms. Koestner has a unique style that blends humor, clear content, graphic illustration, and authority. She was accessible and easy to work with before and during the presentation day. I highly recommend the services of Ms. Koestner for all K-12 students and families.”

Principal

Rye Neck Middle School, NY

OUTSIDE AUDIT

  • Account termination
  • Data breech & security
  • Data transmission
  • Document tracking
  • Server downtime
  • Stress tests

INFRASTRUCTURE AND APPS

  • Cross-platform synchronization
  • Economic savings
  • Efficiencies
  • New system integration
  • Sensitive data handling
  • User permissions

Could you use our help? Try these questions.

  • What would happened if the top two members of your IT department were unable to report for work for 2 weeks?
  • How is your sensitive and critical data being stored and how many people hold the “keys to this castle?”
  • If your faculty are creating and maintain their own sites for school purposes, does your IT Director or anyone else have a way to login and administer the sites, should you need to suddenly terminate the faculty member?