To: Asha Riley
From: Steve Rippl
Date: September 18, 2025
RE: Tech Department Report
Our summer was a busy one as always, dominated initially by our student Chromebook cycle. We had new Chromebooks for our incoming 5th grade to prep, and we took in all 8th grade Chromebooks so we could make sure they were functioning correctly for the students’ entry into the high school. We also took some time repairing and reconfiguring elementary school Chromebooks in their classroom carts, but due to slightly lower staffing this year (we didn’t have our usual extra summer help), we didn’t have time to get to every K-4 cart as we had hoped to.
Along with various other helpdesk tasks over the summer around room changes, equipment replacement and the like, the relatively new computer lab at Columbia got a makeover over the summer. New furniture was purchased, and the layout was rearranged, in preparation for Heather Boop becoming the Tech Specialist starting this school year. And with the help of our facilities department, more of the large interactive TVs were mounted in our elementary and middle school classrooms, and new digital clocks were installed in the middle school hallways.
We also connected our new North Fork portable to our network, installed new security cameras, and replaced broken ones across all the campuses including TEAM. We’ve moved North Fork and Columbia onto our open source camera server software to free up camera licensing, which enabled expansion at those and the middle school campuses.
We updated the software running our open source phone system. This was a major change that required a different version of the underlying operating system and careful migration of our settings to the new systems (we run 4 phone servers across the district). All things considered, it went pretty smoothly; just a few smaller issues had to be addressed once we made the switch. We also added redundancy to our DHCP server setup (the system that gives devices their “address” when they connect to the network), so that it stopped being a single point of failure for the network if that server experienced problems.
Some improvements were made to the KWRL Portal in terms of how trips, SPED routes, and buses are managed, and we added the facility for staff to request time off through it. We also finished building the rider referral system in it, and that’s now live as of the start of the year. In Sips, we improved LAP reporting, so data can be imported straight into Skyward from a single file (avoiding someone having to do double entry), we made some changes to TEAM Student Learning Plans to ease teacher workload, and made some small improvements to reporting and dashboards.
We also ran a full day of staff training for teachers in August around AI and technology use in the classroom. The idea was to raise the awareness of, and confidence around the use of AI for our teachers, and to begin the conversations about its relevant use, as well as examine some of our potentially less productive uses of technology with students. I think it was well received. We’ll be following up with teachers as the year progresses.