{"id":252187,"date":"2026-05-21T19:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T23:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/21\/why-hiring-a-school-cto-is-no-longer-just-about-tech-savviness\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T04:55:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:55:18","slug":"why-hiring-a-school-cto-is-no-longer-just-about-tech-savviness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/21\/why-hiring-a-school-cto-is-no-longer-just-about-tech-savviness\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Hiring a School CTO Is No Longer Just About Tech-Savviness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Hiring a School CTO Is No Longer Just About Tech-Savviness<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/education\/k-12\/why-hiring-a-school-cto-is-no-longer-just-about-tech-savviness<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-21 19:48:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.govtech.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The close of a school year signals the start of hiring season, and the process of hiring a chief technology officer or chief information officer appears to have become significantly more complex than it was even a few years ago.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence initiatives, cybersecurity threats, interoperability demands and the need for increasingly sophisticated tech infrastructure are reshaping what districts require from technology leaders \u2014 and, some experts say, transforming how districts should conduct searches for those positions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

EVOLUTION OF THE CTO\/CIO ROLE<\/h3>\n

Sandra Paul, a self-employed ed-tech consultant who spent over three decades working in education as both a teacher and IT director in New Jersey public schools, said that districts have been elevating tech-savvy teachers, librarians or instructional coaches into technology leadership roles for years. Their work used to focus largely on classroom integration and curriculum support, she said, but those roles have evolved alongside the technology itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour librarian was really the person in charge of your laptop carts, and they were the ones that used to show students skills, and also prepare teachers,\u201d Paul said. \u201cBut, what is it that, technically, they understand about networks? What is it they technically understand about cybersecurity? Or what do they really understand technically about interoperability, and data privacy? It\u2019s not just a matter of the curriculum, but ensuring that you\u2019re providing the bandwidth and the services that are needed for fulfilling the requirements of the curriculum for the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

From Springtown Independent School District (ISD) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, CTO Amanda Lanicek agreed that the \u201ctech-savvy teacher\u201d pipeline may have worked in the past \u2014 even just three to five years ago \u2014 but she said districts now face a much more advanced technology landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow there\u2019s all kinds…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Hiring a School CTO Is No Longer Just About Tech-Savviness https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/education\/k-12\/why-hiring-a-school-cto-is-no-longer-just-about-tech-savviness Publish Date: 2026-05-21…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/erepublic.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/93f52fc\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1000x486+0+38\/resize\/1440x700!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ferepublic-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F5c%2F9d%2F08c74cf0bd6bdeeb429625c22767%2Fshutterstock-now-hiring.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-252187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252189,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252187\/revisions\/252189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}