Staff Spotlight: Efrain Irizarry
Efrain "Izzy" Irizarry is an IT technician who assists teachers, students and staff at four EHPS buildings. His strong work ethic and genuine desire to help leads him to look beyond just his list of assigned tasks and toward future technology needs.
“Izzy is a highly energetic individual. He is someone that really thinks about who he's servicing, very strong customer service skills, highly motivated, very intelligent and always wants to put staff members, students, and the families overall first when he's doing any task,” said Tim Homa, EHPS Information Technology Manager.
“He really thinks about not the tasks that he's doing right then and there, but the task overall. He makes sure that if you ask for help, he's going to look at what you asked him for help with, but also anything else that's in the room and how he can service that need as well, even without being asked,” said Homa.
Learn more about Irizarry in the Q&A below.
How did you become an IT Tech for East Hartford Public Schools?
Irizarry: I've been working for the town since approximately 2006. I first started in security. I always had a passion for electronics, for technology, so I went back to school. I got my associate’s degree, and I put in a couple times to intern for IT, and the past two years, I just went in full time.
I very appreciative of the Board of Ed for first hiring me in 2006 as a substitute and allowing me to progress and grow with them.
What are your responsibilities as an IT tech?
Irizarry: As in the title, you deal with a lot of technology. So I deal with a lot of computer issues, broken Chromebooks, I deal with audio equipment. We also deal with a lot of projectors, a lot of touchscreen devices, ViewSonics.
Whenever they have issues or problems arise, they submit a ticket. There’s an IT tech assigned to every building, so the tech assigned to that building will receive the ticket. And once we receive the ticket, we will either fix it remotely, some of our problems we could fix remotely, but if we have to go to the site, we just go to the school. The schools I'm assigned to are Synergy, Pitkin Elementary School and O’Connell East and West Elementary Schools.
Tell us about some of those problems you see.
Irizarry: Like for instance, they would come in and say it doesn't turn on today and it was perfect, and sometimes different scenarios. And then we find out that, let's say it had water damage, but they didn’t let us know right away. So, you know, we check it, we dry it up. I have a couple sponges that sometimes I can fix water damaged devices and that way, you know, we fix it at the lowest cost. Sometimes even we could get Chromebooks saved from being totally destroyed, and that way we won't have to charge any kind of accountabilities to the student. Whenever they get me, I'm trying to fix it to the best of my abilities.
What is it about yourself that makes you good at this job?
Irizarry: Whenever anyone brings me a Chromebook or a problem, I genuinely care about it. And I want the staff to know that, you know, I want you to work better. I want the device to work as is intended. I usually have a quick conversation with the staff, and I troubleshoot real quick. And once I'm done troubleshooting, I give him or her back the electronic equipment and they seem to be happy with the timing. I've been working on computers for over 20 years, so I kind of know how to deal with the hardware.
When it comes to certain devices like cell phone devices, even computers, I try to troubleshoot and they watch what I'm doing. So that way they'll know more or less, if it ever happens again, that they'll remember like, ‘Oh, I did this, I did that. He did it right in front of me. He spoke to me and he kind of broke it down. When you get this error, it’s more or less because of this’. So basically if the staff member or the student wants to know how I got to the problem, I'm always open to showing them how I did it.
What are some of the most challenging parts about doing your job?
Irizarry: Some of the challenges could be, because I have three schools, sometimes you could get tickets from all three schools at the same time. And I can't go to all three schools at the same time. So I kind of have to prioritize which school’s problems are bigger than some other problems, organize my list and then go to the schools and solve the tickets. I try to prioritize and go to schools as quickly as possible and get to a solution real quick.
What do you like most about your job?
Irizarry: I love helping staff members, support staff, students. After you help them with an issue, something that was bothering them or technology that wasn't working, they're very ecstatic. Just the satisfaction I get from the staff members, the students after you work on an issue and you help them return back to what they were doing. Like some of the students come in and the Chromebook wasn't working or connected to the WiFi, and they actually want to go back to class and learn real quick. So it makes me feel good that I'm able to help them.