how many tech's does it take

I'm afraid you aren't going to be able to find ANYTHING that says 'this type of environment, with X computers requires X number of techs of such and such a type'.

Such documentation doesn't exist (at least not in the form you are looking for). Since every environment is going to have differing needs and requirements, the best you are going to be able to do is poll other schools systems of similar size (if your lucky some of their administrators are members of this forum) and see what their IT support infrastructure looks like.

You might find trade studies or white papers on the Internet if you search long enough, but even these will not totally answer your question.

Unfortunately, there is no Golden Rule, industry standard, best practice, ideal ratio, or rule of thumb when it comes to IT staffing.

There is no hard and fast answer.

Here is a link to a downloadable spreadsheet to help.

https://www.techrepublic.com/download_item.jhtml?id=r00620020807MS01.htm&total=163&category=Templates+%26+Checklists

Remove any spaces from the pasted link.

Next, you need to define with your supervisor / manager what constitutes appropriate support.

Things to take into account:
The effect of downtime.
Response time.
Staff idle time.

Knowing that every school system is on a tight budget, what tasks can be outsourced?
I assume that the PC setups peak at the start of the school year. As does network setup and user account changes.
What of this can be outsourced or transfered to a VO-ED PC training class to reduce staff workload?

Chas

If your desktop environment is well controlled and homogeneous. Meaning same O/S, same hardware, same applications then you could expect very high support ratios: 200+ - 400+ desktops to 1 helpdesk staff. ISP's have support ratios of 200 - 400+ per helpdesk staff member. It depends upon your environement. For a less homogenous environment may range as low as 10 desktops per helpdesk staff.

From experience: 10 is not enough for what you have there. I would expect that your users areexperiencing a sever decline in service and that you are probably suffering from poor moral due to overwork. If you have budget constraints there are other things that you could do to raise those support ratios.

Hope this helps,

Trish

Your situation has an added element to consider: Students! I suspect that the quality of the instruction and planning of student computer activities has a great impact on the amount of support that is needed. You will need to develop a detailed planto reduce the adverse impact of the learning process on the supported systems. Providing good computing practices materials to the teaching staff may be the preventive medicine that is needed. A good working relationship between support staff and teaching staff is a vital in minimizing problems.
The quality of the support infrastructure also impacts the amount of support staff: remote administration tools like PCanywhere, use of scripting and automation, and PC duplication tools like Ghost. How you approach your systems structure is also a factor: minimize the numbers of OS?s, types of PC and printers, network equipment. Given the ease of remote administration in Linux systems and the minimal licensing cost, using Open source product mayallow you to reduce some infrastructure cost, while allowing you to stay within budget when adding additional staff.
The formula for how many support personnel are needed cannot be evaluated just on the numbers and type of equipment.