IST professionals in public schools
In the higher education world where I work there is an organization of IT professionals called Educause. This group performs research and does a little trend analysis to help us all understand what the big issues that IT professionals in the universities and colleges around the country are and how we are dealing with them. Many other industries have these communities of like minded professionals to help them network, benchmark, etc.
I recently looked for the same thing in the K12 world. I didn't find it.
In many New York State districts the school benefits by utilizing BOCES services to provide direction and perhaps provide the structure and community that these IT groups need. BOCES, however are unavailable to the Big Five school districts, including the Syracuse City School District, whom we work with quite a lot.
The ISTE Techcoordinators Handbook recognizes that many IT positions in schools are staffed by administrators, teachers and teacher assistants. While the experience of these staff are essential to professional development and needs analysis activities in public schools, I am not convinced that they have the breadth of knowledge in IT systems needed to evaluate, implement and maintain those systems.
If trade rags are any indication of how IT is handled, I'd say that Scholastic Administrator, THE Journal and eSchoolNews would lead me to believe that IT is seen as the School Administrator's and teachers responsibility. I am aware of no local or regional meeting of K12 IT professionals to discuss issues around supporting classrooms and compare notes and successes and failures. There are "teacher centered" conferences such as NYSCATE and NECC, but these conferences really focus on change in classrooms and not on sweeping changes across the district and trends in the field outside the district.
The ISTE handbook also mentions the fact that there is no certification for such a position in public school systems. In fact, few states are even planning programs to train IT professionals to deal with the unique world of schools. I can't help wonder if this is a merely an oversight or if there is no perceived need for a specialized person on the part of administrators.