Eileen O’Grady reports that New Hampshire schools have pooled resources to hire someone who will negotiate with tech and app vendors to make sure that the contracts protect the schools and that contracts aren’t suddenly changed on them, etc.
For the past three years, an alliance of school technology directors called the New Hampshire Student Privacy Alliance has been working together to solve this very problem. Each school district chips in a fee – $1.10 per student – and collectively hires a consultant to do much of the negotiating with companies on their behalf. The idea is that school districts working together as a single unit can have more leverage with the companies and reduce the overall workload for each district.
“When we sign the contract, we know that our liability has been transferred from us to the company, basically,” said Pamela McLeod, technology director for the Concord School District. “It’s also kind of shifting the heavy lifting to the districts which have more staff and more capabilities, and kind of letting the smaller districts pay a little bit less attention.”
Read more at Concord Monitor.