WESTFIELD – The School Committee discussed the need to improve technology throughout the district’s school buildings to facilitate an increasing number of technology-drive educational programs.
The issued was raised Monday at the committee’s discussion of the state of schools following tours by committee members, several of who noted that technology slated for installation in the elementary schools is still not available.
Director of Technology and Business Services Ron Rix said this morning that the district was able to acquire the hardware at the end of the past academic year at discounted prices, but that the plan to use vendors on the state approved contractors list hit a snag.
Rix said that the district has used the state contract because the huge volume of goods and services results in lower costs and is typically quicker than the need to get quotes or bids.
“Any time we’re spending more than $5,000 we need to get three quotes, which is time consuming,” Rix said. “The state contracts are at advantageous prices and eliminate the need to have to go out for quotes.”
The snag this summer was that the state contracts, in this case for vendors to install the hardware needed to support ‘hotspots” which facilitate wireless communication, expired on June 30 and have not been renewed yet.
“At the beginning of August we had to get quotes to install the wireless routers which create the hot spots,” Rix said. “It’s a work in progress that I expect will be done very soon.”
The other major technology upgrade came to the district through the Westfield Gas & Electric Department.
“The Westfield Gas & Electric Department will be increasing the bandwidth in the secondary schools from 50 to 100 and in the elementary schools from 10 to 50,” Rix said. “That was done Monday so it will be there when school opens (tomorrow).”
“We had to build the infrastructure to open the bandwidth which we’ve been doing for the past year,” Rix said. “We had to replace the switches because the old system did not support the bandwidth increase.”
“Think of an old clogged shower head: even if you increase the pressure, the amount of water coming out doesn’t increase,” Rix said.
Several members of the School Committee commented on the need for greater wireless capabilities, especially in the elementary school where much of the new educational programming is technology driven.
Rix said that Abner Gibbs School would be the first targeted for the technology upgrade.
“We’re moving to wireless hot spots in every school. It’s a work in progress to give capacity to look at more mobile devices in all of our schools,” Rix said, “And it’s just going to keep growing and growing.”
