By Paul J. Condra
Still, for East Rockaway schools, which are expected to be fully wired up by next year, there is no second-guessing that now is the right time to make the connection.
While other schools jumped in and rewired, we wanted to wait to make sure we had the latest technology, said superintendent Arnie Dodge at a school board meeting two weeks ago. Dodge was half-joking, acknowledging the paradox of a task for which the latest technology changes daily. Still, the district vows it will be the most technologically up-to-date anywhere, and the $3.7 million system it has put together does much to back this claim.
This is the optimum time to have this done, and I really believe that, Dodge said in an interview. There are other districts who did the wiring maybe five years ago that now have outdated technology. Because we're coming in later, we will have the fastest stuff.
To accomplish this feat, the district enlisted the help of several contractors, including the LAN-1 corporation, a company that specializes in building local area networks. Together, the school district and the contractors had to devise the most efficient way to bring the latest technology to every classroom of the district's three schools and numerous buildings, some of which are over 50 years old.
This was not as simple as us just saying this is what we want, now go do it, said Bill Teresco, the director of Math Science and Technology for the district, who worked closely with LAN-1.
As he rolled out dozens of architect's draft sheets, Teresco pointed to a floor plan of the high school and explained how planning was underway as far back as June of 2000, shortly after the district passed a bond to fund the upgrades. The first step involved a walk-through of every room in the building, where school officials told LAN-1 exactly where they wanted to place each drop and raceway, the terms used to describe the narrow wall-casings that will house new power outlets and Internet jacks.
From there, architects began creating an entirely new power grid for the school. The new grid would work in tandem with the old one, supplying power to the network independent of the electricity needs of the rest of the building.
According to Jim Ristano, the maintenance supervisor of the school, having two power maps makes managing the system easier. In addition, the new construction didn't affect the everyday workings of the school as there was no need to interfere with the electricity.
The good thing is we didn't have to disrupt the educational process, Teresco explained, adding that contractors worked weekends, nights and afternoons to complete the work that wasn't done over the summer.
The new power grid entailed building a new transformer, which sits behind the school outside the door of Ristano's basement work shop. He said power use won't necessarily increase at the school, rather, an efficient transformer will make more power available.
And it will be needed to bring energy to the nine computer closets being installed in the high school. Less than closets, some are more like black cabinets mounted in various places throughout the school. In one room, the monolithic computer box sits next to piles of old textbooks like an anachronism.
Each closet links to a central panel, where Gary Schore, a cable contractor with CVS Whitcom, has sat for a week over a tiny table finishing the tedious task of matching dozens of hair-thin fiber-optic cables with their correct input jacks.
Now when I try to drive my eyes are fuzzy, he said.
Administrators chose fiber-optics to link the district's schools, but used more traditional cables for connections within each building. Teresco said there was no need to put fiber-optics inside the school, adding that it would be about the only upgrade possible for the advanced system.
When Schore finishes, the school will be ready to link up the 20 new Dell Pentium-4 computers it has purchased. In addition there is an Apple I-Mac lab, computers in every classroom, and five wireless rolling computers on each floor. Each teacher will have the ability to transmit their computer's image to a TV mounted on the wall. Superintendent Dodge said the district is also considering giving teachers hand-held systems, such as Palm Pilots.
Teresco said having the schools linked together will allow students' grades to be easily transferred as they move from elementary school to middle school. It will also allow administrators to keep better tabs on demographics. Teresco said the ease of information exchange could make the educational experience of students more seamless, as their information moves with them from grade to grade.
In his 35 years working in the district, Teresco said the rewiring is a benchmark of his career.
It's phenomenal, it's so exciting, he said.
