Many district offices are proud of the fact that they have “gone paperless,” when all they have done is shifted the burden of printing to the individual schools. They now send electronic copies of staff manuals and parent or teacher handouts to the schools, which are then expected to distribute them to the intended audience.

In wealthier schools where most parents are “connected,” there is little extra cost, but in those schools where fewer parents have access to the Internet, the school must print these documents, often in multiple languages. Thus the schools that can least afford the costs associated with printing are the ones that have the greatest printing costs. What exacerbates the problem is the increase in the number of offices that, because they no longer do the printing themselves, send document upon document to the schools with instructions to distribute them to the intended group. So much for going paperless!

While these practices are a major contributor to the “Help, I’m drowning in e-mails!” syndrome, the dilemma cannot be laid solely at the feet of the central office. However, the fact remains that one can only wonder how school principals can provide high levels of instructional leadership when they are receiving 40 to 50 e-mails every day, with many of them demanding rapid responses to complex requests. Just because it is easier to physically create and send a response by e-mail than to type a similar response and send it by US or intra-district mail does not make up for the exponential increase in volume.

The deputy superintendent for instruction in my former district developed an interesting approach to reduce the e-mail load on her principals. She insisted that all the support staff send documents to her instead of to the principals. Then, on every Friday, she sent a brief e-mail to the principals with all the documents attached, thereby reducing the overall e-mail load.

Let’s not forget the good Samaritans who think they are helping the schools by purchasing technology for them, but fail to provide appropriate levels of support. I know of one situation where a central office unit acquired laptops for a large number of schools, had them delivered to the schools without any advance warning, yet forgot one important element — they didn’t buy a single piece of software for any of the new equipment. Since the standard district software load contained six software packages, this was quite a financial burden to place on schools that hadn’t even ordered the laptops.

Acquiring complex equipment or software systems without appropriate maintenance and support contracts is another, and unforgivable, burden that is sometimes placed on schools. This manifestation of the unintended consequence syndrome is particularly harmful to students, who must often stop using an instructional system in midstream because there are no funds to have it repaired.

I don’t imagine that district staff go out of their way to place extra burdens, such as those described above, on the schools. A little attention to the potential impact of their actions, as well as some thought on alternative approaches, would go a long way in reducing the unpleasant and unintended impact of technology.