Two Buyers, Two Systems: Public vs. Private Tech Purchasing

My role at Huntington Beach City School District is Executive Director of Technology Services, which is a fancy name for a working director. I get in and do help desk tickets alongside my team, depending on what's going on, and if I'm not in meetings I'm out at school sites, which I love. So I'm constantly juggling a help desk, moving projects forward, and different meetings. We're about 4,600 to 4,700 students, K through 8, with 8 campuses plus a couple of facilities we support that have a lot of classified staff. Day to day depends on what fires we have to put out.

It depends on who originates the interest, and it comes from all directions. Over time we've built a district-supported list of applications we either provide or will absolutely support. Teachers come to us with something they're interested in, free or paid, and we evaluate it from the data-privacy standpoint first, whether it's initiated by me, a teacher, or a principal. We also have a somewhat unique structure: I don't budget or pay for edtech products, with the exception of Google Workspace. Things like Renaissance fall under educational services, who engage with the vendors, and I come in to evaluate the technical pieces, rostering, Clever, SFTP uploads. If there's an actual purchase, it goes through ed services and then cabinet, our extended group of directors including the superintendent and assistant superintendents. They discuss the product so everyone can ask questions and validate how it fits our strategic plan and the goals we set annually.

A lot of the time, yes, though not always, sometimes things move quickly and I'll just give consent. But when you're selling something that touches a lot of departments and campuses, it absolutely is a committee of buyers. You may never see those buyers, but it's a joint decision.

Can I piggyback on that? With the screen-time push, all of us, on both the ed-services and tech-services sides, are looking hard at it. I've been digging into screen time, evaluating how kids use it, because I know I'll have to answer for it at some point. And in terms of product adoption, it's definitely tracking toward middle school and upper elementary.

It can go both ways. I recently wrapped procurement for a new help desk and inventory system; that went through on the board consent agenda. All I had to do was my homework, a lot of meetings with peers who'd adopted it, then take it to cabinet for sign-off. Setting up the purchase order took the longest. On the other hand, we use Securly for filtering and wanted to add one of their products; I had early conversations when I started last July but didn't yet understand the lay of the land, so it took about nine months to get approved. When I know what I want, I'll go after it and don't need as much internal buy-in, because I'm making the business case. Although if it's a student information system, I'll be leaving the district if we implement a new one, because that's what you do when you take on something that big.

Bottom-up has worked for a lot of edtech tools over the last 10 to 15 years, and it will keep working. It depends on who's in my seat or John's. I pay attention to a lot of products, honestly with some edtech fatigue after living in the space so long, so I'm a bit jaded about most of what comes my way. But once in a while something comes through with solid pedagogy underneath it, and I'll ask a teacher or two to test it, and we build small pilots from there, because I'm always looking for something that actually supports learning.

The fastest way to kill it is to hammer my LinkedIn inbox with messages I'm not going to answer. The best way, honestly, is through relationships, an introduction from someone I trust who has vetted the product, and peers who've tested it or are looking at it too. We talk a lot behind the scenes, which makes it easier to open the door. Cold calling, I just don't have time for. I'll take internal calls all day because I want my end users supported, but a cold call, I honestly don't have time.

It's so true. Those tactics remind me of a used-car salesman, and it only turns me away from doing business with that vendor.

Transparency. Like buying a car now, I'll go to the website and evaluate the privacy policy and data governance. I'm almost always an informed buyer. There are a couple of small SIS companies slowly disrupting the space right now, and it's because they just had a conversation. I walked by at a conference, they got my attention, and I ended up in a long discussion. It was clear they'd done their homework on the segment and the industry and were solving real problems, and that's when I decided this is a company I want to work with. In a prior role I lined them up to come in and disrupt a legacy player I'd used for close to 20 years. They did it right: did their homework and solved real problems.

Absolutely. If you've done your homework, looked at the district website, and reference it in the conversation, then it's not even about the product, it's about understanding the context. Every district is different, with different challenges. You really need to understand the context before you pitch the product.

Understand the budget cycles. If you're hoping to get in on a major purchase, say $20,000 or more, your conversations realistically have to start in the fall, because you need to be in the next school year's budget, unless you're a painkiller solving a massive problem we can clear budget for. A lot of things are nice-to-haves. Staying connected through the cycle matters, and so does being willing to wait. Vendors work off quarterly numbers, but our purchasing cycles are longer; it may take a year, and that doesn't mean we're not interested. It also has to be balanced against other initiatives, because we can only take on so many projects at once and we want them to succeed. Budgets are largely general fund for public ed, with some title funding, which is categorical funding from the feds or the state; my district doesn't have a ton of that.

I'd add that beyond the district budget, sites have their own funds, including PTA funding, that pay for various software, which I don't control. But every technology purchase in my district needs my sign-off, so if it's redundant we talk about why they should use what already exists. And the board approval threshold matters: under $5,000 you can buy what you want, but over $5,000 needs the board's consent after the fact.

Recently we were purchasing through a joint powers authority, and I was surprised that late in the process they rejected the purchase order because it didn't reference the JPA agreement, which was on them to initiate, not me. It dragged things out and didn't make me confident in the sales rep. Another time, a vendor we work with referred us to another company; the sales process was fine, but implementation fell apart so badly I had to threaten to pull the contract. Have your ducks in a row and make it easy on me.

To piggyback, a lot of newer companies don't plan for the summer crunch, they're off on vacation, and I'm thinking, no, that's go time in our industry. My summers are mapped out three years ahead, for switch upgrades, VoIP, you name it. We hope our vendors understand that and build their customer success and implementation teams around it.

It's a younger startup building an AI product, and when I first saw it I thought, this is different, not just a GPT wrapper. Very low pressure: please just try it and let us know what you think. They kept reaching back for feedback, did the teachers like it, with no pressure to move to a sale. The process was organic; they genuinely wanted to know how teachers felt, and never once tried to demo or pitch, because the product speaks for itself. They were also very responsive to feature requests and put them on the roadmap. That built a strong relationship.

I'll piggyback on that. It stands out when a vendor comes ready with a plan: here's what it looks like, here's our suggested cadence for follow-up meetings, does that work for your schedule? They accommodate you. Every two weeks is perfect for a check-in, and we can talk any time in between, but that dedicated time to walk through the project matters.

Right now, "it has AI." Great, that doesn't really impress me at this point.

Such a great point. I get vendors who think we're the high school district, because there is one in our town, and they pitch high-school products. That's not us, and it doesn't build my confidence. I'll tell the director over there to watch out for them, because we talk behind the scenes. If you turn someone off, it gets around fast.

I'm careful about who I select for pilots, because we want some control. We often target our toughest internal customers, because they'll find all the problems. A pilot for me is really about what I need to know before we scale, where the problems are, which is why I pilot at a lower level. But there are products I don't need to pilot, because I've done the homework and talked to enough people about their experience with the vendor and the product. Going into an unpaid pilot, there's no skin in the game for the district, which is bad for the vendor, they put in a lot of effort with no requirement that the district match it. So approach pilots with caution, focus on whether we're solving a real problem, and if we are, get them into a paid pilot so there's skin in the game.

Be patient with the process. Sometimes it goes fast, sometimes slow, but I try to be transparent about the timeline so they don't get their hopes up about closing in Q1 or Q2. I'll tell them honestly who needs to be involved and what the timeline looks like, and working with me through that shows me you're a partner.

Thank you, guys, appreciate it.