I like to phrase this as "never think you need permission to do a good job", but it's ever so true.
You pretend to forget about the policy, and they pretend to tell you off for it, and you pretend to be remorseful.
It sucks, but it's the effective way to do business in a bureaucracy.
District IT policy prohibits teachers from connecting their phones to the school wifi network (along with many other frivolously absurd IT policies).
For three years, I have sent email to various administrators, including to the school superintendent, pointing out how dangerous it is for teachers to have no cell signal, especially if there is an emergency such as an active shooter or whatever. Beyond a polite response promising that it'll will be "looked in to," nothing has come of my messages.
Last week, teachers across the district were told that they are soon to be required to use 2FA using their personal cell phones to authenticate to the school network for email, grading software, etc.
I have no idea how this will be able to work at her school.
I know everyone has a phone nowadays but the business should really be paying at least part of the cost for those devices.
Same with working from home.
School administrators aren’t capable of giving you more cell signal though. Those microcells don’t work that well and are specific to your carrier, I think? Complain to the carrier.
The 2FA is text but should be authenticator.
The building itself is "owned" by a separate part of the government than the part that actually sits in it (and this is almost always true, no matter what part of the government you're talking about). As a consequence, getting the building fixed requires coordinating someone else's budget and personnel. Whereas installing unofficial cell repeaters can come out of your own budget, specifically because they're unofficial.
You'd be amazed how many things you can do - physical things you do with your hands, like, say, turning a storage room into an office, a thing I actually did - if you just ignore people telling you you aren't allowed to. If you ask the question "what will happen if I ignore this policy", and the answer is not "I will get a pay cut" or "I will get fired," then the policy in question isn't actually a policy. It's just a suggestion.
Figuring your management's pain points is also very very helpful. I work in a building with metal walls and no windows. As a consequence we get no cell service in the building. We've been asking for cell repeaters for nearly fifteen years; we were always told "we can't do that, it's a personal service provided to employees, we can't pay for personal services."
Eventually the fire alarm went out - for 18 MONTHS. During a lab wide conference call I pointed out that in case of a fire there was no way to alert employees in the building. They said "we'll send cell phone alerts", and I replied that as they knew, because I had been telling them every year for fifteen years, there was no cell service in the building, and that this was a lawsuit waiting for the next building fire.
Guess what is being installed as we speak?