From floppy disks to AI: Meet the man who brought Richland schools into the 21st century
Long before the era of iPhones and fast 5G internet, a young Mike Leseberg and his family moved to the Pacific Northwest with dreams of greener pastures.
The Utah native was fed up working logistics. He was looking to make a career change after more than a decade of manual labor. And a new job for his wife had precipitated the move to the Tri-Cities.
“At that time, I decided that I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. That wasn’t going to lead me anywhere,” said Leseberg, now 66.
His parents had worked as computer programmers for the federal government, so Leseberg decided to try his hand at an emerging industry: Information technology.
A job operating Columbia Basin College’s computer lab led to a full-time gig as the Richland School District’s first-ever computer technician. Then he took on the role of executive director of information technology.
Three decades later, he is calling it a career.
Leseberg helped lift Richland School District into the 21st century with networks, servers and computers. Now, after bringing technology to tens of thousands of students and employees — and establishing a cache of 20,000 electronic devices across dozens of schools — he’s retiring at the end of the month.
“It has been a whirlwind,” he told the Tri-City Herald. “It’s really been on-the-job training. My degree in computer science didn’t teach me anything that I do in my job, to be honest with you.”
His story is one of patience and strategy. Two principles have helped guide his time at Richland.
The district makes decisions and technology follows in support of those decisions.
Technology cannot and will not be a barrier to instruction.
“Mike has been a leader for the whole educational community, spreading his vision that technology cannot and will not be a barrier to instruction,” Superintendent Shelley Redinger said in a statement.
“His dedication to implementing safe and innovative uses of technology in the classroom has left a lasting mark on our district. Mike has infused his forward-thinking approach into the district’s information technology staff, ensuring his vision continues for years to come. He has left quite a legacy and will be greatly missed,” she said.
CBC to Richland
Modern school districts are wired to the gills with complex systems of cables, inter-school servers and networks that help administrators, support staff and teachers communicate and educate the next generation of workers.
Richland schools weren’t connected to the internet by the time Leseberg came on to the scene. The only real “networks” at the time were for front office record keeping and library book inventories. Outside of a phone call, there was not real way for different schools to “talk” to one another.
The district came to CBC looking for a part-time worker to teach principals how to use Microsoft Office and other software. Leseberg, then a student finishing up his degree and working at the college’s computer lab, volunteered enthusiastically.
“One of the things about me getting the job with Richland was, at that time, the technology department not only handled technology, they also offered professional development classes to staff,” Leseberg said. “The fact that I could teach a little bit gave me an upper hand because I could fill two hats. ... That gave me a foot in the door.”
Leseberg accepted a job in July 1994 as the district’s first full-time computer technician. He recounts that, at the time of hiring, the IT department was just him, the executive director and a secretary — today there are nearly two dozen employees.
He recounts that his first big task on the job was outfitting the newly renovated Chief Joseph Middle School with computers and network infrastructure.
“We were setting up Office 95 installed off floppy disks, 3-1/4-inch box of 50 diskettes,” he said. “We had to basically load all the software manually.”
Director of information technology
After about four years working for the district, Leseberg was offered the executive director position by former Superintendent Richard Semler after the previous director took on another role.
“It caught me completely by surprise,” Leseberg said. “I had some experience by then. And then, of course, we were starting to build schools, too, and starting to remodel them.”
The new IT boss received a crash course in technology infrastructure when the school district completely remodeled Carmichael Middle School around 2000.
“Carmichael was kind of a disaster as far as technology goes,” he said. “The general contractor had put in some fiber to the desktop — as in, the ‘latest-and-greatest’ technology for computers — and it failed miserably. It was a proprietary solution and it didn’t work at all. So, we basically ended up ripping it out part-way through the year and went back to the old standards and cabling infrastructure.”
With more school construction projects planned for the coming years, Leseberg made the argument that his department needed a seat at the table to avoid technology infrastructure mishaps — especially if taxpayers expected them to care for the buildings for 40-50 years.
“Since then, my department has had a say in what technology goes in, what the infrastructure looks like,” he said.
Before the pandemic, Leseberg helped Richland build out a one-to-one model so that every student had their own laptop computer available. That played a big part in helping the district prop up an online school, Pacific Crest Online Academy, when the COVID pandemic hit.
With retirement ahead, Leseberg says he’s looking forward to more days camping and playing golf.
