Keith Wright keeps pace with changing technology at Ramona Unified – San Diego Union-Tribune

Keith Wright has seen many technological changes during his 24 years as an IT specialist for the Ramona Unified School District.

When the director of Information and Education Systems first came to work for the school district in August 2000, his primary responsibility was to support approximately 500 employees with technology. Now he and his team support 800 employees and 5,200 students.

“We had minimal internet connections, and people didn’t really use email,” Wright said. “Attendance, grading, scheduling, and registration were all done on paper. Now it’s all done online. It allows us to import registration data instead of having someone manually enter it, which has saved us days and days, even months, of work.”

Wright has seen his team grow from a network manager and two computer technicians to nine members in the Education Services Department—one network manager, five technicians, two data support services workers, and one administrative assistant.

During that same time, the number of devices in the district also increased from 500 to 8,000, including laptops, Chromebooks, desktop computers, phones, intercoms and security cameras.

At the same time, the number of technical support calls — those submitted by students and district staff when they encounter technical issues — has increased from 1,300 in the 2000-01 school year to 4,400 in the 2023-24 school year.

Wright and his department have adapted well to the changes, but he acknowledges that a relatively small school district like Ramona Unified often doesn’t have the budget to work with the latest, most cutting-edge technology.

Many of the changes were made out of necessity, such as the implementation of the Canvas Learning Management Platform — which helps teachers create assignments, discussions, quizzes and files digitally while also providing a calendar of assignments and emails to students — during COVID, he said. Canvas is now an integral part of school systems, he added.

Over the past 24 years, his services have moved from email and the Internet to wireless and have expanded access to apps. The district has been slow to adopt Chromebooks, he said, but now there’s a device for every student.

“Not everyone is as good at handling change as others, but we are all doing the same thing for the same goal of student achievement,” Wright said.

Wright was ready to meet the challenges created by the rapid expansion of technology. His goal, when he earned a bachelor’s degree in information systems from San Diego State University in 1996, was to help people solve their technical problems.

“I liked working with computers, and I liked the puzzles and the logic of solving problems with systems and networks,” he said. “That’s what drew me to it, the problem-solving itself. It was natural to me.”

Wright’s first job in the field was as a systems engineer at CompuCom, where he gained experience with various types of systems, networks and servers, and met many clients, including Ramona Unified School District.

Then, while working for Vortex Data Systems, Wright gained greater knowledge of servers and networking related to Microsoft products.

When it came time for Wright to move his family — wife Sylvia and children Kristina Wright Huffman, 34; Ashley Kruse, 27; and Christian Wright, 21 — from Spring Valley, he said they chose Ramona. He said he fell in love with the area and the schools while working for CompuCom. Shortly after arriving in Ramona, a future position with the school district opened up for him.

“It’s a really good hometown and I like the people and I like the people in the schools, so I thought it was a really good place for us,” Wright said. “I liked living here and I had three kids that went to the school district. It was great. I got to go to all their sports events. I got to see them grow up and be around them, which is priceless.”

An added bonus is spending time with her daughter, Kristina Wright Huffman, who is the school district’s human resources manager, and her son-in-law, Bobby Huffman, the district’s maintenance and janitorial manager.

Wright said he worked with his daughter this year to improve the teacher onboarding process.

Teachers typically start work officially a few days before the start of the new school year, but unofficially they spend weeks preparing through training and staff development, he said. The new system meant that teachers received laptops, email, logins and other technical equipment about a month before school started.

“Everything is done digitally now, so we can get information out much faster and set up new employees in the programs we use to communicate with schools and all the departments,” Huffman said. “We can also assign students to teachers much faster than we could in years past.”

Huffman has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and sociology and received a full softball scholarship to the University of Notre Dame in 2012. After graduating, she returned to Ramona and worked as a college admissions counselor and catching coach for PowerLine Consulting.

“After playing softball for 17 years, I needed to change direction in my life,” said Huffman, who started working for Ramona Unified as a human resources technician in 2014. “It was a very lucky coincidence. I came to see my dad at lunch and told him I was looking for a career change. He found the Ramona Unified human resources website and there was an opening for a human resources technician. So I thought I’d give it a try and see if I liked it and if I qualified for it.”

The assistant principal for human resources at the time was Tony Newman, who had been the assistant principal when she attended Olive Peirce Middle School and the principal when she attended Ramona High School.

“Knowing the person I had the opportunity to work for, it seemed like a really good job to apply for, so I did it and fortunately I was selected,” said Huffman, who earned a master’s degree in human resources from National University in 2018. “Here I am 10 years later. You just don’t think about working in education unless you have personal experience. Fortunately, my dad worked for the district for so long that it gave me a chance. I wouldn’t be here without him.”

Wright says he loves working with his daughter and considers her a blessing every day.

Huffman said the feeling is mutual. And she also gets to work with her husband, Bobby, whom she met through mutual friends a week before the COVID lockdown. Bobby was a student at the time and was interested in working in the school district.

“We went to the district website to see what positions were available, he applied and got in,” Kristina Huffman said, adding that he was hired in 2021.

The couple has two sons, Bryce, 1.5, and Blake, 3.5, and are expecting a daughter, Bailey, on October 10.

“One of the best things about working for the district is working with my dad every day,” Huffman said. “He is one of the hardest working, dedicated people in this district. He will do anything he can to make things better for our staff and students.”