School board discusses IT for district

Friday, April 12, 2013

By Ralph Pokorny

Nevada Daily Mail

Phase I of the technology upgrades for the Nevada R-5 School District is almost complete, Chase Owens, R-5 IT supervisor, said during a work session before Wednesday's regular monthly R-5 Board of Education meeting at Benton Elementary School.

The $800,000 in technology upgrades are being paid for with money from the $5.9 million bond issue voters passed in April 2012. However, the need for the technology upgrades was so great that the R-5 board committed to proceed, even if the bond issue failed.

"Since June, (2012) myself, Eric Fast, Greg Tabor and Al Carpenter have done all the work to upgrade the district's IT infrastructure. We have replaced all the switches and the wireless hubs," Owens told the R-5 board. And by using virtual servers they were able to reduce the number of physical servers from six to three.

He said the connection between the district's buildings has been increased to 10 GB.

"It can now support new technology," Owens said.

He reminded the board of the iPads the district had that could not be used because the district's Internet connection could not handle the added usage.

In addition to upgrading the district's Internet connection, Owens said they have upgraded the operating system and installed the new Microsoft Office on about 40 percent of the computers.

The district's infrastructure has made a 180-degree turn, he said.

"I'm very happy with where we are today. We're now at the forefront of technology. We're no longer on the back burner," he said.

Phase II, was originally conceived to provide a laptop or tablet for all the faculty and each of the students in the high school. That is temporarily on hold while the district does further research on what will be the best option.

Assistant Superintendent Dr. Tyson Beshore told the board that he and Owens have been talking to other school districts that have already provided laptops or tablets for their students about what they have learned.

Beshore told the board that he and Owens were looking at three options for Phase II.

Option one is to provide a device to each student in grades 9-12, which would give each student access. However, the downside is the initial cost of purchasing the 750 devices, the cost to each student and whether the district's IT staff can keep up with the added workload.

Option two would provide a device to each student in one grade initially, and add another grade the following year until all students have a device. This would give the district time to adapt. However, the question of which grade to choose becomes a problem, particular when the district gets to classes taken by students in different grades.

Option three, Beshore said is what he would choose if he had to make a recommendation now. That would be to have carts with laptops, in the case of the high school and tablets in the middle school, widely available in the school. This would limit the upfront cost for the devices and reduce or eliminate the cost for each student.

One of the initial reasons for issuing a laptop or tablet to each student was to go to ebooks for texts, instead of printed books, to save money.

Beshore said that is not the case, since the ebooks are only licensed for one particular student and cannot be transferred to another student. So the district would still end up spending about the same amount of money for books.

In addition to progress in the updates to the districts IT infrastructure, the construction on the new performing arts center and the gym are still ahead of schedule.

Aaron Hight, construction manager for Crossland Construction, told the board.

While the rain has slowed the work, they are still 16 calendar days ahead of schedule he said.

The current estimated completion date for the performing arts center is Sept. 10 and the multi-purpose building Aug. 13, Hight told the board.

All of the floors have been poured, except for the sloping part of the floor, he said.

"They will start pouring that Friday," he said.

"The masons still have about a month left to complete their work," Hight said.

Right now the performing arts center is 37.5 percent complete with the project billing, which is fairly accurate, he said.

"That's the number I look at," Hight said.

Hight told the board that he did want to give them a heads up so they will know what is happening when the contractors start putting up the sheeting. It will be in multi colors, but that will not matter in the end, because the sheeting will all be hidden.

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