Rochester School District Technology ~ NEWS ~

Fellow Educators,
I want to welcome any new educators to the district and extend a thank you to those who have supported our technology efforts in the past. We have a listing of policies and procedures along with our monthly Newsletters on the Intranet (You must be logged into your sau54.org account to access.) that can be accessed by a school networked computer. We also have information on the Internet (https://www.rochesterschools.com/cic ) that can be accessed by all school computers and any computer connected to the Internet. Some key issues for this school year include:

Training new staff – The CIC (Computer Information Center) can set up training sessions for you and your staff, we just ask that you consolidate your efforts for a group, because it is better use of our time and resources.
General Technical Support – Staff on the school network should submit a ticket for technical assistance using Help Desk - Sign in using your computer username and password. For taff not on the network or parents, please send an email to:
Tech Support Questions for Parents
parenthelpdesk@sau54.org
Tech Support Questions for Staff
staffhelpdesk@sau54.org
- Please provide detailed information on your problem.The more detailed information that is provided to us, the easier it is for us for identify and rectify an issue.
Email – Email accounts are approved by the HR (Human Resources) department and the requests are sent to the CIC once a staff member has officially been hired. We have had a few creative High School students try to setup “Phantom” teacher email accounts, so it’s best that requests go through HR first to verify employment.
IC (Infinite Campus Student Information System) – Each building has multiple IC building coaches and their names are listed on the Intranet website. Please use these staff members as your first point of contact for support.
Phones – For planning purposes, plan for $500 per phone move and $1,000 per new phone installation.
Firewall Issues – We have various local, state, and federal laws/mandates to have such a device for all network connections. Identity theft and malicious activity through unfiltered Internet access to various websites is also at an all-time high. We also lock the computers down from installing any illegal or malicious software. We will work with you to try to resolve certain websites and software installations from being blocked, but we also have to protect the network and any personal information.
MUNIS – This system handles all of the purchases orders and financial reporting for the district.
Password Changes – We have received numerous requests for password changes from staff member’s cell phones, home numbers, and personal email accounts. Again, identity theft is at an all-time high and there is no way for the CIC to verify who exactly is contacting us, especially when we have no admin/secretarial support. We have set a password change policy of 180 days, which is the same recommendation by the State of New Hampshire’s IT department. If your password needs to be reset, have a trusted source, such as a building administrator or principal; contact us for a password reset from an official school email account.
Spyware and Virus’s from Email – The school network has a series of anti-virus and spam filters. Current statistics has about 98% of incoming email tagged as spam or a computer virus. Luckily, most of that email does not reach your inbox. We all need to be aware that if a parent, students, or staff member’s home computer is infected with a computer virus, our system will not allow that email to our network.
Overhead/Smartboard Bulbs and Toner – Media specialists or other staff members are encouraged to budget for these items in their budgets. CIC does not stock these items. CIC is looking to outsource support of Smartboards through an outside vendor. Once these systems are out of warranty, they can be very expensive to repair and such repairs will need to come out of your schools budget.
Backing up Data – Irregular power (thunderstorms, icestorms, brownouts, etc) is the numberone cause of disk drive failures. It is important to backup any critical data regularly. It is recommended that users backup their critical data to a file server, USB drive, CD Burner, floppy drive, share drive, or some other device.If you need assistance, contact the CIC.

Thank you for your support and the CIC looks forward to working with throughout theschool year and beyond.
CIC Staff