County Schools Passing Their Y2K Readiness Tests

With less than two months left before the new year, Ventura County school officials are running final tests on their systems, updating classroom computers and creating checklists for principals.

But administrators aren’t worried about a potential Y2K disaster. In fact, during a monthly support group meeting at the Ventura County superintendent of schools office Thursday, a few technology directors made jokes about the feared computer breakdown.

Pulling a stuffed toy insect out of his briefcase, Simi Valley Unified systems analyst John Leas said, “We did find a bug, a Y2K bug.”

Toting pagers, hand-held computers and cell phones, his colleagues laughed and shook their heads.

Like most of the county’s 20 districts, Simi Valley doesn’t expect any Y2K problems, Leas said. Last month, officials shut down the main systems and turned the clocks forward as a trial run. As the clocks struck midnight, Leas and his staff watched the computers do exactly what they were supposed to do. And then they wished each other a happy new year.

“Surprisingly, everything seemed to work well,” Leas said. “I was pretty confident before, and I’m really confident now. When Y2K comes, we’ll be ready.”

Some predict that a programming glitch could cause computers everywhere to read the date as 1900 instead of 2000, throwing off entire systems.

Principals and custodians from Ventura Unified School District will be at work on Jan. 1, double-checking that all the computers, bells and security systems are on track. They will be required to run through a checklist and report back to Ted Malos, director of technology for the district.

“If the stuff is old enough, it’s mechanical, so not to worry,” he said. “If it’s new enough, it’s Y2K cognizant, so not to worry. But there’s that middle ground, so we’ll come in and go through our lists.”

The district will also have a team on call for New Year’s Eve.

Several districts are extending their winter vacation, in case of any computer glitches. While students would normally return to classes on Jan. 3, Simi Valley and Fillmore students start Jan. 10, Oxnard Elementary students start Jan. 6 and Pleasant Valley students start Jan. 5.

“It buys us a little bit of time,” said Jill Giboney, computer network technician for the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District. “We want the extra two days to make sure all the fire alarm and security systems are working.”

Giboney said her district is 90% ready for the new year and expects to be 100% by the time the students leave for winter break.

Officials from a few districts, including Santa Paula Elementary and Oxnard Union High, said their central systems are Y2K checked and compliant, but some of the classroom computers haven’t been updated.

“We’ve bought several computers recently, so we’re confident they’ll be working,” said Harold Venable, coordinator of educational technology for Oxnard Union High School District. “The question is the older ones.”

Oxnard district officials said they also need to finish updating the student databases.

David Richards, assistant director of information technology services for the county schools office, reassured his colleagues that all payroll systems are in order. “We want to make sure all the teachers get paid,” he said.

“Teachers?” said one county administrator. “We want to get paid too.”