To: Asha Riley
From: Steve Rippl
Date: January 15, 2025
RE: Tech Department Report
Over the winter break, we put together over 40 desktop computers, about a dozen for the CTE student computer replacement cycle and the rest for staff. A few have already been deployed, and the rest will go out over the next few weeks and months. Also, just before the break, the 13 new interactive TVs for CES were delivered, and our facilities team already put a couple of them up in classrooms (to very appreciative teachers!). The rest will be installed between now and the end of the summer, as time allows. I’m very grateful to Neil for stepping in and not missing a beat in being prepared to help out with all these installs. Not having to contract this out saves us a lot of money.
Principals have been expressing the need to expand our camera system here and there to cover various blind spots, but this has stalled in the past in part because of camera server licensing costs. Now we are experimenting with an open source camera server, which isn’t as polished as a commercial product but seems to do the job, and costs us nothing for the software (there are still hardware costs, though we’re exploring used/refurbished hardware for this too). We’re experimenting with bringing one of these servers online for Columbia so we can evaluate it for a while. We’ll also be adding additional cameras for three schools next summer.
We have some Columbia WCC families kindly acting as beta testers for our new electronic check-in/check-out system. That has begun this week, and as we iron out any bugs and ensure the staff are happy with the process we will gradually expand its use.
Among other pieces that got rolled out over the winter break is an airport style “departure dashboard” for the KWRL offices. Utilizing the data already being captured in the KWRL Portal, we’re now able to present a live screen of route departures to the office, making it easier for the office staff to catch when a route is delayed starting for some reason. And we’ve made a few more improvements to our High School and Beyond Plan management for the high school staff, enabling them to better track when students have completed tasks to a sufficient standard. Over the next two years, the whole State is transitioning to a unified platform for facilitating this process, but in the meantime, we now have a more manageable situation here.