[CALUG] Open letter to new school board member

[Jim Sansing]

I recently read an article in the Howard Count Times about the recently
elected school board members.  One of them, Brian Meskin, is the
youngest member ever to serve, and his stated goal is to reduce costs. 
I thought it might be worth sending an open letter to him from CALUG to
encourage the use of open standards and look into incorporating FOSS
software in the school system.

Here is a first draft.  Any thoughts?

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An open letter to Brian Meshkin,

Congratulations on your election to the Howard County School Board.  We
were happy to hear you say, "It's very easy to do more when you're
spending more, but it's harder to do more when spending less.  As a
board member, there's no authority on revenue.  All you can do is figure
out how to save the money you currently have.  You have to figure out
how to do more with less, just like every family in Howard County is
trying to do in the recession."

We in the Columbia Area Linux Users Group (http://www.calug.org)
encourage you to use open standards to help you achieve your goals. 
When organizations are locked into closed standards, they are forced to
follow the vendor's upgrade schedule, while those that mandate open
standards are free to take advantage of market competition, including
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).  An example of this would be to
require every classroom to accept assignments in not only Microsoft
Office formats, but also in the international standard Open Document
Format, or at least the well-documented PDF format.  This allows
students and their families to use software such as Open Office, which
is free to download and use without licensing restrictions.

To learn about the cost savings of FOSS, contact (the IT department?) at
the Howard County Library, which uses Linux almost exclusively on all
computers, including staff systems.  And if you simply want to learn
more about Linux and FOSS, our members will be happy to talk with you.

You should also consider that it is in the interest of students to learn
about multiple platforms, including the Linux operating system. 
According to Dice.com, Linux job postings are increasing while those for
other platforms are decreasing.  Here in the Washington, DC area, there
are many government agencies heavily involved in deploying the Linux
operating system, including NASA, NOAA, and the NSA, which contributed
updates for Security Enhanced Linux, working with a Howard County
contractor (RABA?).  Also, there are two companies in Howard County,
that were built around open source computer security projects, Tenable
Inc. and SourceFire Inc.

We wish you success in your quest to continue improving the quality of
education here in Howard County, in spite of the difficulties posed by
the current recession.

Columbia Area Linux Users Group