Timothy Alexander
Systems Administrator · K-12 IT · North Carolina
I'm a Systems Administrator at Richmond County Schools. I came to IT from the classroom after nine years as a special education teacher, so I build systems with the people who use them in mind: teachers, staff and the techs who support them.
Day to day I manage the district's endpoints and the servers behind them, and I spend a lot of my time replacing manual work with automation. Playbooks, scripts and runbooks live in git, changes get logged, and monitoring tells us about problems before users do. Lately that includes AI-assisted operations: connecting Claude to our monitoring, automation and documentation tools.
At home I run a self-hosted lab where I try ideas before they're ready for work.
What I Do
Endpoint & Device Management
Windows and Mac fleets through Microsoft Intune, Autopilot and Configuration Manager, and iPads through Mosyle, including an app packaging platform that builds, signs, tests and publishes Intune apps.
Automation
Ansible playbooks run through Semaphore for server baselines and agent rollouts, PowerShell and Python for the glue, n8n workflows for things like phishing-report triage, and Google Apps Script for staff-facing tools.
Infrastructure, Monitoring & Security
Linux and Windows servers on Hyper-V and VMware, Docker services behind a reverse proxy, internal certificates, Zabbix for monitoring and alerting, and Wazuh for security monitoring, all tied to single sign-on.
Accessibility & Standards
Automated WCAG 2.1 AA scanning of district and school websites and documents for the ADA Title II web rule, plus a shared design and data-privacy guide so what the department builds stays consistent and accessible.
Projects
At Work
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Intune App Platform
A packaging pipeline for district software: a build server that packages, signs and publishes apps to Intune, a test client enrolled through Autopilot, and a web app (FastAPI and Postgres behind Entra sign-in) where techs request and approve apps. Jobs run as Ansible templates in Semaphore.
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Monitoring & Security Rollout
Stood up Zabbix and Wazuh for the district, with Ansible baselines that install and configure their agents, time, updates, SSH and certificates on every server. The whole tech department signs in with SSO, and alerts route to the right people.
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Website Accessibility Scanning
Scheduled WCAG 2.1 AA scans of the district site, school sites, vendor pages and PDFs, published as internal reports so content owners can see and fix issues ahead of the ADA Title II deadline.
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Workflow Automation
Self-hosted n8n for department automations, starting with triage of user-reported phishing emails, and Google Apps Script tools such as a new-hire onboarding site for HR.
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AI-Assisted IT Operations
Connected Claude to our monitoring, security, automation and ticketing tools through MCP, with docs, playbooks and runbooks kept in git so every change is reviewable and the department gets a weekly change digest.
Home Lab
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Home Assistant + Meta Glasses (in progress)
A Meta AI connector that lets Ray-Ban Meta glasses talk to my self-hosted Home Assistant ("Hey Meta, did I close the dog door?"), with scoped tools and OAuth account linking, exposed through a Cloudflare tunnel.
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Automatic Work-Mileage Log (in progress)
Home Assistant tracks my work car's trips between school sites and fills in the district mileage form at the official chart distances, flagging non-school stops for review. Replacing a paid mileage app.
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Self-Hosted Server & Network
An unRaid server running media and automation containers, a dedicated firewall build, Cisco switching with VLANs for IoT, PoE cameras, and remote access through Cloudflare tunnels with no open ports.
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This Site
Hand-built static site on Cloudflare Pages, deployed from GitHub, with no frameworks, self-hosted fonts, light and dark themes, and email routing on the same domain. Styled from my own brand tokens.
Background
Experience
- 2021 – now
Systems Administrator
Richmond County Schools
Started as a Technician III and moved into the Systems Administrator role. I run endpoint management (Intune, Autopilot, Configuration Manager, Mosyle), the district's monitoring, security and automation servers (Zabbix, Wazuh, Semaphore/Ansible, n8n, Docker), identity and collaboration platforms (Entra ID, Active Directory, Google Workspace, Exchange), and safety systems such as cameras, intercoms and panic alarms.
- 2019 – 2021
Special Education Teacher
Moore County Schools
Taught using Applied Behavior Analysis, led the EC department, coordinated communication between school and district, and served as the school's Special Olympics representative.
- 2014 – 2019
Special Education Teacher
Durham Public Schools
Supported students with severe autism, served on the EC Advisory Council, and chaired the professional learning community for middle school Adapted Curriculum teachers.
Education
- 2010
B.A. in Philosophy and Religious Studies
Campbell University
Philosophy taught me to break problems down and test assumptions, which is most of troubleshooting. Religious studies taught me to listen to people who see things differently, which is most of supporting users.
Systems Skills
Automation & Code
Also
Writing
Contact
The best way to reach me is email. I'm happy to talk about K-12 IT, automation, home labs, or anything on this site.
Send me an email