198: Stephen Corcoran

IT Supervisor, Reading School District

Prior to the COVID 19 pandemic, Stephen’s 8-hour workday was involved with dealing with anything tech support related, the help desk, calls coming in, the Chromebooks being used, and overseeing 10 techs that work with him.

Once the pandemic hit, his 8-hour day became a 24-hour on-call day. There are 24 buildings in the Reading School District. In each school, there are Chromebooks the students share. Teachers and classrooms would take turns on about 7000 computers total. Now with all the students having to go virtual, the district decided to forego any expense plans and buy computers for all the kids. An additional 12,000 were purchased. This meant 19,000 computers had to be handed out to these students. One would go to each household. 

 Stephen said, “The help of everyone from principals to cafeteria workers was wonderful.” From 7am until 10 at night appointments were made for parents to come by (masks, gloves, distancing and all protocols followed) and pick up a computer. It all needed to be recorded and tracked. It was quite an undertaking. 

After the computer distribution, there was a major assistance effort to teach parents and students how to use them. Stephen was also available to assist teachers to get acclimated to teaching virtually. Once started, classes were all held on schedule. The current plan is that those students can retain their computers.

Stephen thinks, “Coming out of this we all may appreciate the little things more, like concerts, movies, and Friday night things.” During the shutdown, he picked up the guitar he played when he was 9 years old. He had it re-strung, tuned, and started playing again