Study: Schools Unprepared for Y2K

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/19991027/tc/y2k_schools_1.html

Quote:

"Without the fixes, any information that relies on a date could experience a year's-end glitch. Conceivably, heating systems could fail, cafeteria freezers could shut down, teacher paychecks could be held up and student records could be corrupted."

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), October 27, 1999

Answers

Hey Hamster, on a 1 to 10 scale, what do you think the severity of y2k will be?

-- earl (earl.shuholm@worldnet.att.net), October 27, 1999.

Earl, I hope its a 4 or less. I started to write a long message here the other day as to why I felt that way and it ended up 4 screens long and meandered back and forth and in the end it was still just guessing.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), October 27, 1999.

Wouldn't a school be one of the firstthings to remediate.

During an emergency, won't people congregate at large public buildings like schools, churches, libraries, city hall, etc.

Where are the warming centers?

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), October 27, 1999.

http://currents.net/newstoday/99/10/28/news15.html

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

Daily News

Y2K Closing 1,000 Schools

By David McGuire, Newsbytes.

October 28, 1999

More than 1,000 schools nationwide will likely have to shut their doors to fix Y2K-related failures after Jan. 1, said Department of Education Deputy Secretary Mike Smith at a press conference today.

"I'd be very surprised if somewhere on the order of 1,000 to 1,500 schools" did not have to shut down in order to fix Y2K-related failures, Smith said, citing the somewhat bleak results of a recent Department of Education survey.

While 96 percent of school districts say that they will complete fixes to their "mission-critical" systems before Jan. 1, only 86 percent of those surveyed indicated that they would complete Y2K fixes to their schools' infrastructures before the date rollover.

So while district-based payroll and computer systems will likely be up and running as of Jan. 1, many school-based heating, security and telecommunications systems could go down, Smith said.

Also, roughly a third of the school districts surveyed are reporting that they will complete their Y2K fixes in the fourth quarter of 1999, leaving precious little room for error, Smith said.

The nation's top Y2K watchdog agreed with Smith's assessment. "A lot of school systems are cutting it very close, a lot of them aren't going to make it and some of them are going to be in difficulty," said John Koskinen, chair of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion.

Many of the school districts at the greatest risk for Y2K-related failures are "moving their (starting) dates now to give themselves some running room," Koskinen told Newsbytes. Most schools are set to reconvene following their holiday breaks on Monday, Jan. 3. Many districts have already announced their intention to roll back that date.

Both Koskinen and Smith stressed the need for school districts to continue working on remediation efforts and also to develop and test Y2K contingency plans.

The Department of Education also surveyed colleges and universities, finding that, while 97 percent of the nation's institutions anticipate completing fixes to mission-critical systems before Jan. 1, only 85 percent expect to complete infrastructure fixes before the date roll over.

The Department has established a program to pay the tuition fees and costs of students whose federal financial aid checks get misdirected or lost as a result of Y2K failures, Smith said.

Also on the "higher education" front, Koskinen pointed out the potential for the "loss of a lot of research data" stored on college professors' individual computers.

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-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), October 27, 1999.

Just saw Kosky and Co. on CSPAN-2 talking about this. They said to figure on at least one school failing (ie. closing) per district and that there are 15,000 districts (about 90,000 schools) nationwide.

That means 15,000 schools closed NOT 1,000. They also said that most schools should be able to fix their Y2K problems over the 3 day weekend (yeah, right). Btw, the GAO guy who was there was noticibly uncomfortable with some of the statements made by *others* at the podium. When he was up there he was calm and cool.

On the POSITIVE side almost all the reporters asking questions were really putting the screws to them, not just taking what they said at face value. Let's hope the trend continues...

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), October 27, 1999.

Also on the "higher education" front, Koskinen pointed out the potential for the "loss of a lot of research data" stored on college professors' individual computers.

Morons for instructors. And we wonder why each generation gets dumbed down to water.

-- professor clueless (head@class.ass), October 27, 1999.