Starting in the fall, Washington High School’s campus will go wireless, allowing Internet access anywhere inside the building.
At Monday’s District 308 school board meeting, board members unanimously approved purchasing $23,283 worth of wireless equipment from Aruba Networks in California.
“There are several universities that use Aruba equipment. It’s very reliable,” said District 308 technology director Todd Hellrigel. “They don’t currently have any high schools in the area that are wireless, so they very much want to showcase Washington High School.”
Hellrigel cited the need for more computer labs in the school.The buildings currently only have wireless access in the gyms and library, he said.
“Our labs are extremely tight,” he said. “We have the ability to maximize our space by having mobile labs — labs we can roll in and out of classrooms.”
Board member Gloria McNett agreed with the need for more computer labs without taking additional classroom space.
“It would help us with our classroom crunch,” she said. “We lose so many classrooms to labs.”
Hellrigel said new wireless technology now provides Internet accesses as fast as wire speeds. It would even allow for access outside the building, like at the track, he added.
With future health/life safety work being done this summer, superindendent Dr. James Dunnan said it would be the right time to make the wireless transistion.
“It actually is an opportune time,” Dunnan said.
The bid for the equipment originally started out at about $35,000, Hellrigel said. They got the cost down to about $23,000, partly because the school is going to be used in a commercial for the product.
“It’s a defining project for Washington High School,” Hellrigel said.
In other action and discussion, the board:
• heard a report by Dunnan on health/life safety work being done this summer.
Board members will vote to approve the bid for new windows Jan. 23, during their annual planning meeting. The rest of the health/life safety bids are expected to be approved Feb. 8.
A portion of the asbestos abatement work is still on track to be complete during spring break.
“That’s a lot of tile removal,” Dunnan said. “But what that does, it helps us get a jump start, so that when we start the work this summer, we already have some areas that are taken care of.”
During the first two weeks of June, all the gross removal will take place in three large areas — which will require sections of the building to be closed off, he said. This work needs to be done before all of the other renovations take place starting June 15.
