The news is filled with stories about shortfalls in education budgets. Yet, as a country, we believe our schools need to do better for our children. The consensus that the educational system needs to be improved creates public and political will for the country to invest in schools.And the federal government's economic stimulus plan will put billions of dollars into the hands of state and school officials for K-12 education. Even discounting the stimulus money, state governments and school boards, budget restraints and all, have plenty of dollars to spend on IT. Add these factors together -- need, will and money -- and you can go to the head of the class by targeting the K-12 market.

"I think the education market will be more stable than the commercial or government sides of the fence," says Joseph Walz, president of VAR Unique Software and Computers."Kids still have to go to school and they still need computers."

"Schools have to compete to keep their students, and in order to do that, they need to stay current with technology," observes Alan Daron, who is in charge of K-12 development at solution provider SPI Innovations. Schools use technology for enhancing learning, improving administrative efficiency and providing security, all big issues today.

And the current economic slowdown may not affect IT spending as much as you may think. "When you're a government agency, you have an operating budget and a capital expense budget, and the operating budget basically stays constant, even in a down economy," notes Scott Rudolph, account executive at CompuWave, a VAR specializing in government and education.

Tying down exactly how much of the government's $787 billion stimulus package will go toward K-12 is not possible, but certainly billions will be flowing in its direction.

LeiLani Cauthen, publisher of Converge Magazine and manager for the Center for Digital Education, notes that there are additional funds.Another $5 billion is earmarked to pursue teacher quality initiatives and better assessments and data systems, which are the tests used to gauge student progress and the IT needed to administer and manage the tests. Another $650 million is destined for an innovation fund that, in part, supports school systems in their quest to close the achievement gap and improve graduation rates. Other earmarks include $650 million in direct education funding for the Education Technology program; $8.8 billion for school modernization, which includes science labs and network infrastructure; and $4.7 billion for a Commerce Department program to bring broadband into schools.

You get the idea: There is a lot of money, tens of billions of dollars, heading toward K-12, and a sizable chunk will be spent on technology."Education," says Cauthen,"is getting more stimulus money, directly and indirectly, than any other sector."

Making the Sale
Whichever technology solutions you offer, all observers agree that building relationships is essential to making the K-12 sale. "If you don't have a relationship, you're just another face at a bid meeting," notes Daron of SPI Innovations. Working with school officials, keeping commitments and offering top-notch service go a long way toward solidifying relationships.

"We'll pick up computers and drop them off and go the extra step,"Walz says. He always follows up sales calls with service calls to ensure that everything is OK. Good relationships with vendors pay off, too. Referrals from vendors lead to a sale almost all of the time, he says.

Another key to K-12 success is creative thinking. As an example, Daron of SPI Innovations now provides an on-site service to reimage all computers during the summer when schools are closed.

Creativity also can involve offering solutions without waiting to find out what people at the school think it needs. Cauthen advises submitting creative proposals at the outset of the relationship. An example might be computer labs for multiple schools that would include software for graphics, CAD and workforce skills such as Microsoft Office. Such a lab would have value to students as well as the community. It's also important for solution providers to stretch a school's dollars.

Varsity Technologies, an IT consulting firm, worked with one school district's personnel to identify state-sponsored programs to offset the cost of an energy-saving IT solution. Leveraging a state loan program, Varsity proposed a virtualization solution that, along with other strategies, demonstrated energy-cost savings of 60 percent with ROI realized in less than five years. According to CEO Patrick Ciccarelli, this enabled the district to fund the project through their existing operating budget.

Another example: Instead of licensing Microsoft products, perhaps free Google apps might work. Some schools might look at iPhones and their cell phone brethren as something bad, but perhaps these can be leveraged as a way for the school to communicate with its students and save some money.

K-12 is no longer child's play. It is a maturing market that gets high grades during a failing economy.