COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 18, Geoffrey Andrews, the CEO of the Management Council of the Ohio Education Computer Network, announced he will be retiring at the conclusion of this fiscal year, on June 30, 2026. He has served as the CEO for more than a decade, leading the Council in its work to coordinate and represent Ohio's sixteen Information Technology Centers (ITCs), which serve all of Ohio's K–12 education community.

During the past decade, the Council has grown in both size and scope, expanding from a handful of employees to nearly one hundred. The Council has broadened services to ITCs and the Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) to include student information; EMIS; fiscal and ERP software; cybersecurity training and tools; software development; library services; database management; a resilient and redundant data center; disaster recovery hosting; longitudinal data analysis programs; the statewide Ohio Education Job Board; executive leadership training; statewide purchasing; and a wide array of application procurement, hosting, and training services.

Beyond the K–12 environment, the Council has added services supporting the Departments of Higher Education, Job and Family Services, Children and Youth, and the offices of the Governor, State Auditor, and Secretary of State. The Council has partnered on research projects with Batelle for Kids, Ohio State, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Dartmouth, and many of Ohio's Community Colleges and Educational Service Centers.

Asked to reflect on accomplishments during his tenure at the Management Council, Andrews expressed his admiration for the remarkably talented and responsive staff across the organization and their unyielding commitment to the students, teachers, and leaders in Ohio's schools. "I well remember our pandemic response: to spin up over 60,000 Zoom licenses and training in a matter of days, find a means for students and families to connect during that difficult time, and creatively leverage data to get pandemic benefits to hundreds of thousands of children that would otherwise have gone hungry. The culture at the Management Council has been to be passionately responsive to the needs of Ohioans."

Andrews cited excellence of professionals all across the organization, noting staff efforts to create an extraordinarily robust technical environment that included no-cost upgrades and free ten-year fiber leases enabling ITCs to expand internet connectivity from 10GB to 200GB to support Ohio's schools. He also noted the Council's talented software development and support teams that reinvigorated widely used state fiscal and HR software, and continue to produce, train, and support mission-critical capabilities for schools covering student information systems, fiscal processing, EMIS, and internet services, along with library, teaching, and learning resources. The distribution of Ohio school funding and the ratings on the school district report cards are formulated based upon the data managed by the ITCs and Management Council.

He also expressed pride in the relationships that the Management Council has built both with and within various state agencies, and with leading technology providers. Through these relationships the Council has been able to provide and often subsidize more products and services, at more sophisticated levels and at lower costs (and sometimes free of charge) to the ITCs across Ohio. This positive trajectory securing resources has continued throughout the past decade, procuring assets from cyber subsidies to learning resources. Most recently the Council partnered with the Governor's Office and DEW to provide three years of top-rated TechGuard cybersecurity training to all Ohio schools along with special cybersecurity resources to all ITCs, all at no cost to schools or ITCs. The Council's cyber personnel have been especially vital to schools in the current era of malicious cyber actors and vectors.

Working with Ohio's Department of Higher Education, the Council has provided technology bringing clarity and support to students and schools to increase FAFSA completion among Ohio's seniors, bringing more federal funding to Ohio's young adults as they pursue technical or collegiate education after high school. The Council has been instrumental in rolling out the Governor's Merit Scholarships and the Grow Your Own Teacher Scholarships. The Council also leverages data in collaborative projects to help recognize, address, and reduce chronic absenteeism in Ohio schools.

Through his years as CEO of the Management Council, Andrews was tapped to serve in several additional leadership roles, including co-chair of the State Software Oversight Commission, vice chair and finance chair of Ohio's Broadcast Education Media Commission, and chair of the Broadband Ohio Alliance, along with the Governor's AI-in-Education commission. He was also instrumental in rewriting the standards for Ohio's ITCs, clarifying the expectations and improving the consistency among these high performing organizations as they serve Ohio schools.

The Board of the Management Council will begin the search process for Andrews' successor early in 2026. Board Chair Tyler Smith shared that while the next CEO will have big shoes to fill, the Council is well-positioned from a financial, technical, human resource, partnership, and innovation perspective, making the CEO role a dynamic opportunity for talented candidates.

Ohio's Information Technology Centers (ITCs) work together through a statewide network known as the Ohio Education Computer Network (OECN). The Management Council coordinates and supports the collaborative efforts of the OECN, which implements a broad spectrum of academic and administrative technologies across Ohio's PreK-12 education system. Visit managementcouncil.org for more information.

Contact:
Jessica Madison, The Management Council
614.840.9810
jessica.madison@managementcouncil.org

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/management-council-announces-retirement-of-ceo-geoffrey-andrews-302622324.html

SOURCE The Management Council