CoSN's New Focuses Include Collaboration, DEI, AI Leadership

Priorities in the next three years for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), a national peer organization of K-12 school IT leaders, include providing better communications and more resources to individual schools, empowering all types of educators to collaborate regularly, and improving diversity, equity and inclusion measures in the ed tech leadership space.

The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization recently published its 2023-2026 strategic plan and will evaluate its first quarter progress on July 1. The last plan, completed in 2019, became obsolete due massive changes in remote learning brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and by the increasing frequency of cyber attacks on schools, according to CoSN Chairwoman Diane Doersch, who spoke with Government Technology on Friday.

“After the global pandemic,” she said, “it was pretty much just survival mode.”

The organization, with chapters in 30 states, provided resources to schools under the previous document, but not necessarily guidance or direction. The latest strategic plan, by contrast, encourages individual schools and chapters to engage with the national organization early and often, Doersch explained.

Resources provided to member districts include online courses, webinars, industry communications and networking opportunities. The main goal is to help school IT leaders incorporate the best practices in their field. The updated strategic plan highlighted three “directions”:

• Enabling "inclusive and nimble" technology;
• Improving member experience to create a sense of belonging;
• Using their network to build communities.

Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging are ingrained in each of the three directions noted in the plan. Doersch emphasized that while a major goal is to encourage women and racial minorities to become school technology leaders, the inclusion component has a far greater reach. For example, she said, in a typical high school, IT leaders should be attending meetings related to curriculum, student discipline and extracurricular activities just as the heads of those functions should be attending meetings regarding cybersecurity and web instruction.

“In the past, tech leaders were just working under boxes and wires. They should not be working in isolation anymore,” Doersch said. “It [school operations] has to be cross-functional, where all leaders are involved and, with almost any topic, technology should not be the afterthought.”

According to the new strategic plan, CoSN has “an opportunity to take the lead against ed tech backlash.” Doersch said this means her organization is working to get past the task of assessing learning loss from the pandemic and focus more attention on improved school cybersecurity measures and shaping policy and standards for AI use in school, to include ChatGPT.

“We keep talking about learning loss, but we need to focus on the future, especially AI,” she said. “It’s a balancing act between safety and great opportunities.”

Since the new plan was implemented earlier this year, CoSN has already met with individual chapters monthly and is addressing all needs and concerns.

“We are nothing as a national organization if we can’t service our members,” Doersch said.

Increasing home Internet connectivity for students across the nation also remains a high priority for CoSN. The nonprofit organization serves about 13 million students.