To: Asha Riley
From: Steve Rippl
Date: February 19, 2026
Subject: Technology Report
Over the last year, we’ve built a digital attendance portal for Woodland Child Care. It runs off of our website and utilizes kiosks for parents to check their children in and out at pickup and drop-off. It has streamlined invoicing, and just recently passed the final hurdle when it was approved for use by the State, as we support families with subsidized childcare through our programs at CES and North Fork.
Finn, our resident AV expert, has been working away in the background on trying to make further improvements to the various high school audio systems. They started out as overly complex, which has always caused problems when people “adjusted” things, so we’re continuing to attempt to streamline and simplify wherever possible. We’ve improved the positioning of things like microphone antennas, and we’re purchasing a couple of higher-quality microphones as well. The commons is also a very challenging space acoustically, though he is doing what tuning we can to improve the quality of the sound. Some of this is with the upcoming drama production in mind; we hope to be able to improve on the sound quality from last year, at least to some degree.
At several of the schools, we’ve been replacing some security cameras that were gradually failing, and so were giving us poor image quality. We’ve also installed a couple more to cover some blind spots in the halls at the high school.
Also at the high school, we’re experimenting with giving staff ChromeOS devices to use as their primary teaching computer. Currently, most teachers have a Windows desktop and a separate low-cost Chromebook. We have 5 teachers piloting using a higher quality Chromebook only, which they plug into a USB dock to power their classroom TV or projector. It’s proven popular so far, so we’ll gradually expand it as we’re able to.
One dark cloud on the Chromebook horizon right now is spiking prices due to RAM shortages. (Blame AI data centers!) We’re looking around for next year’s student Chromebooks in our regular cycle, and we're being quoted $100 over last year’s prices (on what was a $250 computer!). We’re still shopping around and looking at alternative ARM processors (less affected by the squeeze), but all schools are in a similar position, so supply and options are very limited right now.
Lastly, we’ve been continuing to make small improvements in our in-house applications. As an example, the KWRL Portal now handles pre-enrolled students better, so parents can register for transportation earlier. We’re also improving how we handle the payroll calendars for the drivers' contracted time throughout the year.