‘I'm here to support the teachers and students in the classroom’ New Chief Information Officer puts schools at the center of IT’s efforts

As BVSD’s new Chief Information Officer, Frankie Elmore and his department are responsible for a lot of technology. 

With 1:Web, just about every student and staff member in the school district has a device that must be deployed and repaired from time-to-time. Additionally, the Information Technology department manages the district’s wifi network, software and digital security measures.

He’s used to managing large technology systems. 

Prior to coming to BVSD this summer, he was at Gwinnett County Public Schools, the largest school system in Georgia with more than 120 school buildings, about 188,000 students and more than 11,000 staff members. 

“Gwinnett is a legendary district, and at the time, the superintendent was a legendary guy in the K-12 industry. [J. Alvin Wilbanks] had been superintendent for 25 years in the same location and the longest-serving member of the board had been there since 1973. That's wild,” Elmore said. “There was long-term stability, so they were able to do a lot of really great things.” 

Before that he was responsible for seeing IT systems for the military including for U.S. Central Command and the Marines.

“[After high school] I ran off to the Marine Corps and they trained me to be an electronics technician. Twenty-three years later, I was running the operations of large technology support facilities [for the military].

Through those experiences he says he developed a servant-based style of leadership, which serves him well in education.

“What I would like everyone to know is that I'm here to support the teachers and students in the classroom. Bottom line,” Elmore said. 

“The example I like to give is, if this were a commercial company, making widgets, technology's job would be to help the company make Widgets faster, better and cheaper to improve the bottom line. We educate kids here. Right? So, it's our job in technology to help our teachers and our students perform better in the classroom. And that's the reason why we have technology today,” Elmore added.

As a result, he is already eyeing some changes in his department. No longer will employees and students be required to use Chromebooks.

“I am not here to dictate what technologies you can and cannot use,” Elmore said. “We are here to guide and support the use of technology in the classroom.” 

“If there is something that a principal or teacher wants to look at in the classroom, let us know,” he added. “Let us have a conversation around how we can actually facilitate that and support it and make it secure in the classroom.”

Beyond the difficult ERP system rollout that he inherited, ensuring digital security and finding ways to pay for technology are the biggest challenges IT faces at the moment.

Elmore says that it takes everyone working together to keep our system secure, but his department leads the way by educating staff and students about the dangers online.

“It's up to [IT] to make sure that we are providing the proper training for our end users so that you don't get misled into clicking on Phishing email,” Elmore said.

He says one of the biggest challenges is that PK-12 education, unlike other industries is expected to keep information about our customers – students – stored forever – which creates a growing risk.

Still, he doesn’t want that to get in the way of teachers finding and using the best tools in instruction.

“I want teachers to have the most innovative educational technology available in the classroom. It's my job to make it secure on the backend,” Elmore said. “You always have to ensure that it is well protected and well secure. That said, we can become overly secure. I mean, we can become so secure that you essentially can't do your work. There's a fine balance that has to be worked out.”

Similarly, he says with the expanding technological needs of a school district, it can be tough to ensure you’ve got enough funding for all the devices needed.

“We try to keep the equipment as modernized as we possibly can, given working within our budgetary constraints. Because you'll never have all the money you would ever want to be able to provide every piece of technology,” Elmore said. 

He, however, understands what the priority is.

“Our job is to prepare our students for college and career as they leave high school. They need to be exposed to those technologies that they will be expected to use on a daily basis, wherever that they may be. We must figure out how to provide them that exposure,” Elmore said.

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Getting to Know Frankie

Here are few more details, so you can get to know our new IT leader.

Frankie is from Florida

He grew up about 20 miles from Walt Disney World in Central Florida. He says it was a very blue collar area, dominated by the citrus industry and, of course, the House of the Mouse – neither of which interested him much – leading to his decision to enlist in the Marines.

Serving in exotic locales

During Frankie’s years in the Marine Corps he had the opportunity to serve in both Paris, France and Havana, Cuba. He says that typically if you get assigned a posh post, you have to pay for it by serving in a not-so-nice outpost elsewhere in the world. Frankie, however, is quick to mention that he didn't suffer at all in Havana. While many of his colleagues were collecting cigar rings, he had the opportunity to learn fencing from an Olympic-caliber athlete. He says that was one of the best benefits of serving on an island that was essentially closed off to the rest of the world.

Touché

That’s right – our Chief Information Officer is a swashbuckler! Inspired by the Saturday morning episodes he watched during his childhood, he has become an Épéeist. He says that is the fencing technique that most closely mimics traditional sword fighting.