TECHNOLOGY

Wendy Bruso, Systems Administrator

Points of Pride

This past winter the ANWSD Technology Department completed a three-year infrastructure project by which our District achieved “E-911” compliance and a state-of-the-art phone system district-wide. Half of the costs incurred were paid for by a grant from the State of Vermont. With this newly compliant phone system, 911 operators can identify the room where an emergency call comes from within our District buildings, decreasing response time if emergency services ever need to be called. In building this advanced infrastructure for this project, the Technology Department replaced all the network switching equipment at the three elementary schools and some of the high school switches. A great deal of the network wiring was also installed in VUES and FCS.

As our Technology Department continues to face increasing demand for technology related support services, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and building learn-from-home preparedness, we have hired a second Technical Support Specialist bringing our team membership to three. This has allowed us to station a support technician in each of our three main school buildings and allowed us to provide better and more expedient support to our students, teachers, and staff. There have also been several changes within our department with the departure of our Director of Learning and Technology, Violet Nichols; and Wendy Bruso has taken over responsibilities of District Systems Administrator

Using federal COVID-19 response funds (ESSER grants), we have purchased many laptops for teachers and staff, as well as additional student Chromebooks. We also received additional funds from the Emergency Connectivity Fund grant to purchase additional iPads which has allowed us to supply 1:1 iPads for the entire Kindergarten class as well as replace many outdated student and staff iPads. All this additional hardware will allow the students and teachers to maintain flexibility and be ready to transition to learn from home should response to the current pandemic require it.

Additionally, we set up a “Zoom Room” in the VUHS library. This consists of an 86” television and a conference camera, microphone, and sound system. This setup allows for meeting participants to see, hear, and participate in school board meetings held on Zoom. This room serves as a multipurpose area and can also be used as a classroom in the library instead of using a projector and a screen. This equipment was funded by the federal ESSER grants.

Current Projects and Updates

We are in the process of installing outdoor wireless access points for each school so there will be private wireless access while on the sports fields and playgrounds for teachers and staff.

We have applied for additional E-Rate funds to replace the fiber optic cable connecting VUHS to VUES this year. This cable was buried by hand by a staff member over 20 years ago and it is still working. It requires updating to ensure reliability and allow for future enhancements of our network infrastructure.

We continue our work on a schedule to replace aging SmartBoards and interactive projectors in our classrooms. We have chosen interactive flat panels (similar to TVs) to replace our existing interactive board and projector combinations. This will reduce the overall cost and quantity of classroom equipment we have to maintain. We installed one of these in the FCS library in October 2021. Another of these interactive flat panels was installed in room C6 over Christmas break to replace a failed projector there. We replaced three of the old interactive projectors and boards at VUES last year as well.

Finally, we replaced the main domain controller server at VUHS as well as the main network switch in the Fall of 2021. The new network switch has upgraded the networking backbone from 1 Gbp/s to 10 Gbp/s. We continue to work towards improvements and sustainable maintenance of network infrastructure connectivity for our users. We have a future goal of achieving upgrades to all the buildings to a 10 Gbp/s backbone in the coming years to support the everincreasing demands on network speed and throughput of today’s technology.

Future Planning

We will be replacing the wireless access points in both high school gyms and the auditorium with E-Rate funds in the Winter of 2022. We will continue to replace older wireless access points with newer models capable of handling the new Wi-Fi 6 mode to provide better service.

We will be working on improving our Cybersecurity, E-mail security and student data privacy to protect all our users.