The Blueprint Guy

As I've mentioned in several posts before, my current job is as the Chief Information Officer for my school district, which is a fancy title for the director of technology. However, as I'm in a relatively small school district*, I have several jobs that fall outside of the realm of a typical technology coordinator. For instance, I run the district's attendance reports, which is something usually done by the truancy officer. I am also the person in charge of ensuring that everyone who teaches a course is certified to teach that course. And just today, I learned of a new responsibility that I didn't even know I had.

I was merrily working away at my computer, doing something that was ACTUALLY TECHNOLOGY RELATED, when I got a call from Paul, the assistant director of the maintenance department.

"Mr. Sweasy!" he said cheerfully. "I need a favor from you!"

"Sure," I said. "What's up?" I assumed he was going to ask for help with his cell phone, or he was going to need some information about a piece of technology installed in the ceiling of one of the classrooms.

"I need you to pull the blueprints from the original 1954 construction of Lloyd High School."

I laughed out loud at this request. "You need me to do WHAT?"

"You're the Blueprint Guy, aren't you?"

I laughed again. "Well, if I am, I didn't know I was."

"Well, Mr. Davis"--who was my predecessor--"was always the guy who handled this before, so I'm assuming this is your responsibility now!"

Though Paul couldn't see it, I was shaking my head in disbelief. "I've been in this job position for seven years," I said to him. "How is it that I never knew until now that I'm in charge of this?"

"Well," Paul began, "we have copies in the maintenance building of the new additions to the school, and they answer most of our questions, but we don't have the old stuff. That's your department."

"I don't mind being responsible for the blueprints, and I don't mind going and finding them for you," I said, "but before I do, I need you to do something for me."

"Sure!" he said.

"Can you tell me WHERE these blueprints are?" He did.

And that's how I got to spend an hour and a half sitting on top of some precariously balanced boxes in the safe at my office, looking for blueprints.

I never did find them. I could tell that no one has been in charge of the blueprints for seven years, and I could also tell that the person who was in charge of them before that was--like me--preoccupied with technology and attendance and NOT spending a lot of time with blueprints. There were hints that at one time the blueprints had been organized, but not any more. I found new blueprints mixed in with old ones, blueprints for buildings that don't even exist anymore, blueprints for improvements to the "Erlanger-Elsmere Negro School Building," and blueprints for sections of buildings that were never built, including a swimming pool complex proposed back in the 1970's when the Juggernauts regularly won swimming titles, and a much needed auditorium that was going to be built in the area that is currently the new science wing of Lloyd High School.

It was interesting, but it was also a waste of an hour and a half. Now that I know I'm in charge of these plans, I may have to carve out time to spend a day organizing and labeling them.

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*Though not as small as you might imagine. I can't get over the number of people who assume that because my school district is an independent school district that we are a tiny school district. I actually was viewing a webcast where the Commissioner of Education stated that if you were a "tiny" school district "like Erlanger-Elsmere Schools" that you might have to do things differently from what he was suggesting. I wanted to shout at the guy, we're a MIDDLE-SIZED Kentucky school district. Geographically we ARE tiny (It's two and a half miles from one side of our school district to the other), but we have more than 2,300 students enrolled in our schools. From a student population, we are 86th out of 174 public school districts--more school districts are SMALLER than we are than are LARGER than we are. And that includes 43 COUNTY school districts that are smaller than we are!