Mt. Gilead Schools to invest in new technology plan

By LeAnne Gompf -

Mount Gilead schools will be mak­ing a major invest­ment in tech­nol­ogy to replace a sys­tem they believe is outdated.

The board of edu­ca­tion voted to accept phase one of the tech­nol­ogy plan, as pre­sented by Ryan Cur­tis at their Novem­ber board meeting.

The mis­sion of the tech­nol­ogy depart­ment is ‘to pro­vide a sta­ble, reli­able and up to date infra­struc­ture in which to sup­port and enrich the edu­ca­tion of stu­dents in the dis­trict.’ The board says the cur­rent infra­struc­ture is flawed and can­not begin to accom­mo­date the grow­ing needs of the district.

The cost of imple­men­ta­tion for the over­all tech­nol­ogy plan will be approx­i­mately $150,000 — 180,000, accord­ing to dis­trict trea­surer, Trevor Gum­mere. The major­ity of the cost expended will be to rebuild and make cur­rent the server infra­struc­ture, which pro­vides the foun­da­tion for all com­put­ers and net­work sys­tems through­out the dis­trict. The approved replace­ment plan for the district’s server infra­struc­ture will replace “stand­alone” servers with a vir­tu­al­ized server farm.

Accord­ing to the pro­posal, “A vir­tu­al­ized server infra­struc­ture will max­i­mize hard­ware uti­liza­tion; pro­vide redun­dancy and real time resource allo­ca­tion. The resul­tant sys­tem will have a much higher level of scalability.”

The dis­trict will replace all stand­alone servers with three Dell Pow­erEdge R620 servers and begin using VMware soft­ware. This soft­ware allows the servers to vir­tu­ally host embed­ded server soft­ware. The cost of the new soft­ware comes with a three-year main­te­nance plan. The cost of imple­ment­ing phase two was not dis­cussed or approved at the Novem­ber meet­ing but includes a con­sul­tant to assist with the imple­men­ta­tion of the new sys­tem; Cit­rix licenses and lab com­put­ers; and mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware. Accord­ing to the Tech­nol­ogy Plan vir­tu­al­iza­tion deliv­ers a more uni­form and reli­able stu­dent expe­ri­ence. For more infor­ma­tion on the tech­nol­ogy plan you may access the pro­posal which can be found in its entirety on the school’s website.

The board of edu­ca­tion also gave ample meet­ing time to Trans­porta­tion Super­vi­sor, Brenda Legros for her pre­sen­ta­tion and recog­ni­tion of win­ners dur­ing the fall bus safety pro­gram which was Octo­ber 22-26th. She pre­sented a short video that high­lighted events held in pro­mot­ing bus safety and then intro­duced first year bus dri­ver, Stephanie Park.

Stephanie started by telling the board that as new dri­ver she thinks she is more aware of what is hap­pen­ing around her in an effort to pro­tect the stu­dents she trans­ports on her route.

“I have a new respect for bus dri­vers now,” she said. “I know more and see more that I did as a casual dri­ver. Peo­ple are impa­tient and the ‘com­mon’ behav­ior of the aver­age dri­ver threat­ens the safety of our stu­dents. As part of the bus safety week I wanted to make the com­mu­nity more aware of what we do to pro­tect their children.”

As a result, the trans­porta­tion depart­ment cre­ated an aware­ness pro­gram, which included stu­dents in all grade lev­els. The theme for Bus Safety week was “I see the dri­ver and the dri­ver sees me.” The ele­men­tary stu­dents par­tic­i­pated in a safety draw­ing com­pe­ti­tion. The win­ners were treated to a pizza party with their principal.

Win­ners were Kinder­garten were Kim­berely Sta­ley and Cody Baer; 1st Grade — Levi Lawhorn and Eli­jah Chafin; 2nd grade – Colt Hedrick and Mad­di­son Hursey; 3rd grade – Nancy Linn and Jason Linn; 4th grade – Jackie Morhart and Autumn Reeves; and 5th grade – Danika Pow­ers and Macy Atherton.

At the mid­dle school level held a locker poster con­test. The entries were judged and awards pre­sented to the win­ners dur­ing the board meet­ing. Win­ners in this divi­sion were; 1st place Car­olyn Wayne, 4 tick­ets to Fort Rapids; 2nd place Tyler Clark, $50 cash from James Madi­son Insur­ance and 3rd place Heather Emberg, 4 tick­ets to Splat­ter Park from Dale Doty of D and D Lawn Care.

The high school stu­dents par­tic­i­pated by writ­ing essays. Sophia Friesen wrote the win­ning essay. In part she stated, “When you see the warn­ing lights blink­ing… do you stop like a respon­si­ble cit­i­zen or go straight through? There aren’t any kids around any­ways. Count­less dri­vers must make this choice every­day. Many of them stop. Oth­ers take their chances and pass through with no con­se­quences. We must do what­ever is nec­es­sary to pre­vent these most def­i­nitely pre­ventable accidents.”

For her win­ning essay she received $100 cash from James Madi­son Insur­ance. Bri­anna Snow, who won 4 tick­ets to Fort Rapids, wrote the sec­ond place essay; 3rd place was Tim Williamson, win­ning a sports bag from Embroi­dery Ware­house and 1 year mem­ber­ship to the Mor­row County Com­mu­nity Cen­ter and 4th place was Tay­lor Whitt, who won 3 tick­ets to Splat­ter Park from Dale Doty of D and D Lawn Care.

Dur­ing admin­is­tra­tors’ com­ments, High School Prin­ci­pal Debra Clauss rec­og­nized long-time announcer and “voice” for the district’s foot­ball games and school board mem­ber Keith Rogers with a life­time pass for all MOAC for his con­tin­ued sup­port and com­mit­ment to the district’s ath­letic programs.

In fur­ther board busi­ness, the board approved the employ­ment of the fol­low­ing indi­vid­u­als; Melissa Barn­hart, Home Instruc­tion Tutor; Mark Boone and Char­lene Niner, Sub­sti­tute Teach­ers; Mike Wil­son, Full-time Bus Dri­ver. Sup­ple­men­tal con­tracts were awarded to Mike Blan­ton, Mid­dle School Wrestling Vol­un­teer; Susan Delaney, Aux­il­lary Ser­vices; Tom Faux and Ben Saun­ders, High School Wrestling Vol­un­teer; Gerry Harttman, Girl’s JV Bas­ket­ball Coach. Res­ig­na­tion was accepted for Dianna Stevens, full Time Bus Dri­ver and Robyn Meink­ing, Girl’s Var­sity Bas­ket­ball Coach; and leave with­out pay was approved for Lisa Ram­sey for Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 18, 2012.

Due to the recent storm, hur­ri­cane Sandy, the Mid­dle School trip to Wash­ing­ton, DC had been post­poned and was approved fro Novem­ber 27th – Novem­ber 30th. Addi­tion­ally an overnight trip was approved for the Span­ish stu­dents for their trip to Spain in April of 2014.

Super­in­ten­dent Jeff Thomp­son rec­om­mended (and were approved by the board) the fol­low­ing items of inter­est; MG Dis­trict Admin­is­tra­tive Fringe Ben­e­fits pack­age which will have all admin­is­tra­tors respon­si­ble for any increased cost they may incur with regard to health care; admin­is­tra­tive salaries effec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2013; cafe­te­ria super­vi­sor salary effec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2012 and the job descrip­tion for the Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions. This posi­tion will be a redis­tri­b­u­tion of assign­ments by employ­ees cur­rently in the sys­tem and will not be an addi­tional cost to the district.

The next board meet­ing will be Tues­day, Decem­ber 18, 2012 at 7:00 pm in the board of edu­ca­tion office. The pub­lic is wel­come and encour­aged to attend.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Dec 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.