Schools set for 2000

Terry Webster

Wednesday, Dec. 29, 1999 | 11:05 a.m.

The bad news is, the bad grades probably aren't going to disappear at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. The good news is, neither are the good grades.

School and college officials here say they are confident computers will be humming and the vital data they contain -- like grades, for example -- will remain intact when students return from the holiday break.

But it never hurts to have a Year 2000 backup plan.

"We do full backups all of the time," said Lori Temple, associate provost for information technology at UNLV. "Everything has been tested."

The Clark County School District is taking precautionary measures, as well.

"If the worst happens, all of the critical data is backed up and located somewhere else," Philip Brody, the district's chief technology officer, said. "We store it all off-site, not only because of Y2K, but for floods, fires or whatever."

Bringing the computer system up to Y2K standards was a massive project for the Clark County School District, which has more than 250 sites, 50,000 personal computers and a mainframe computer that controls everything from air conditioning and heating to the security systems.

Work on the mainframe computer started about four years ago, Brody said.

"There are millions of lines of code and we had to go through every one," he said.

Additionally, upgrades have been completed on about 700 file servers and countless personal computers. Some of the instructional and personal computers have not been upgraded. Brody says that shouldn't matter.

"We haven't made all of them Y2K ready, but some of them are very old," he said. "Why spend $500 on a $200 computer? For instructional software, it really doesn't matter if it has the wrong date. It only matters if the date is used in calculations."

Overall, Brody said he is "pretty comfortable" with the district's preparedness.

On Jan. 1 staffers from the facilities division will be checking to make sure school communication systems and computer networks are working properly. Also, the district will be staffing a technology help desk on Jan. 1 and 2.

David Broxterman, the district's manager for emergency preparedness, said problems could occur when schools reopen Jan. 3, but they likely will be related to mechanical glitches or other issues related to closing schools for an extended period. Maintenance staff will be available to handle any of those issues.

At UNLV, faculty and students have been keeping up to date on Y2K developments through an Internet website devoted to that purpose.

"We feel really ready and we're fully staffed," said Temple. "It has been a nice, controlled effort."

Like the Clark County School District, UNLV has devoted special attention to upgrading the system that manages student records and financial information.

The only thing left to do now is test the computer system over the New Year's Eve holiday weekend.

"We're going to be taking down a couple of the good-sized machines on Friday and putting them back up on Saturday and Sunday," Temple said.