D-207 Improving Its Internet Service

Maine Township District 207 High School board members okayed funds Monday to improve Internet service in the district's three high schools: Maine East, Maine South and Maine West.

The improvements should address both some recent Internet outages and Internet service slowdowns. They will also set the stage for the fall semester debut of Google Chromebooks, which incoming freshmen will use to read their texts, write papers, do research and more.

"For about $1,300 (more) per month, we're greatly increasing our (Internet) capacity and increasing our redundancy and reliability," said Dr. Hank Thiele, the district's chief technology officer, after the meeting. 

Earlier: Chromebooks plan raises concerns

Because federal funding covers 49 percent of that amount, the true cost to the district will actually be only about $650 a month, he added.

At present, all three schools in the district connect to the Internet from one point at Maine East, so if that should be disrupted, it can disrupt the entire system.

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With the improvements, the district will have a path to the Internet from three points--one at each school. If one of those three pathways to the Internet fails, the system will rout the Internet through one of the other two, he said, adding that Internet users probably would not realize that was happening. 

Each of the three schools will have 250 megabytes per second (mbps) of Internet speed, for a total of 750, Thiele noted. Mbps is a measure of how much information can be passed on per second, he explained. As far as the district's internal network, the Internet will operate at 1,000 mbps between buildings, he said. 

To achieve this capacity and these speeds, the district is modifying its current agreement with AT&T to reduce what it spends on the Ethernet (communications between buildings for its internal network), Thiele said, and apply that to its spending on Internet service. Ethernet costs will go down from about $8,500 a month to less than $2,900.

"We're increasing Internet speed and lowering the price," Thiele commented.

The board also approved spending $33,486 on filtering for the two new Internet portals. In order to qualify for the federal reimbusement dollars for Internet service, the district must filter out pornography and obscenity, Thiele said, though it filters for other categories as well.

At the meeting, board member Eldon Burk asked if the filter would prevent students from researching such topics as the term "breast cancer," referring to the problem of over-blocking, which is censoring worthwhile topics because they contain a word, such as "breast," considered sexual in nature.

Thiele responded that the filters would not block worthy topics of study such as breast cancer.

Here are the items, from the district's April 1 Board of Education agenda, which the board approved:

AT&T ETHERNET SERVICE

Recommendation:

That the Board of Education ratifies the contract with AT&T for Managed Ethernet Service. The contract sets the pricing for the District to expand or reduce coverage based on needs of the District. The District would be contracting for an Ethernet WAN bandwidth of 1000Mbps (1G) at a cost of $2,887.50 per month or $34,650.00 per year for 3 years. The District anticipates receiving at least 49% of this cost back based on E-Rate funding.

AT&T INTERNET SERVICE

Recommendation:

That the Board of Education ratifies the contract with AT&T for Managed Internet Services. The contract sets the pricing for the District to expand or reduce coverage based on needs of the District. The District would be contracting for 250 Mbps out to the Internet from East, South and West at a cost of $10,505.40 per month or $126,064.80 per year for 5 years. The District anticipates receiving at least 49% of this cost back based on E-Rate funding.

CFI – TECHNOLOGY NETWORK FILTERS

Recommendation:

That the Board of Education approve the contract with Communications Finance Inc. (CFI) for internet filters needed for the installation of additional internet pathways. These devices will connect to the filter inappropriate content. The funds are allocated within this year’s technology network budget for network upgrades at a total cost for hardware, software and support for the two filters at $33,486.00.

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