PENNINGTON: School district OKs fiber-optic lease

Five-year, $1 million contract with Verizon will increase the district’s bandwidth to nearly 2,000 times its current size

By John Tredrea, Staff Writer
   The leasing of a fiber-optic cable, expected to improve Internet and phone service in the Hopewell Valley school district, was approved by the school board Feb. 9, said JoAnn Meyer, the district’s community liaison and director of development.
   Federal rebates are expected to cover nearly 40 percent of the cost of getting the cable, Ms. Meyer said.
   Dennis Schmidt, the district’s information technology chief, told the school board during its agenda meeting that the five-year, $1 million contract with Verizon will increase the district’s bandwidth to nearly 2,000 times its current size.
   Mr. Schmidt said Hopewell Valley’s elementary schools are operating with Internet and phone speed of 1.5 megabytes, or roughly one-sixth of what the typical household with a broadband cable connection, such as Comcast or Verizon FiOS, has at 10 megabytes. The new fiber-optic system will provide 2,000 megabytes, or 2 gigabytes, of speed.
   Mr. Schmidt and Douglas W. Brower, who supervises the district’s educational technology, told officials the Internet speed issue is the top complaint of teachers throughout the district.
   ”We’re always at maximum capacity,” said Mr. Schmidt, who has been documenting the growing volume of communications traffic over the past several years. “We flat-line across the day.”
   The small size of the current cable, which is more than 10 years old, means elementary schools reach capacity when 15 phone calls are placed at once or four high-resolution videos are streamed through the Internet at the same time. In other words, at schools such as Bear Tavern, where the student enrollment is 551 and staff numbers 53, Web browsing or phone calls are impossible if just four teachers are streaming a National Geographic cable special into their classrooms at the same time.
   Things aren’t much better at Timberlane or Central High School where cable lines from all seven district buildings, including the central administration building in Pennington, meet — and compete — for access to the Internet.
   Computer speed has been a growing issue as more and more district operations have gone digital in recent years. Web-based software applications support all major departments, from transportation to the job orders processed by custodians. District financial and personnel operations use Web-based software, and all student records related to special education are maintained through software supplied through the Internet.
   Certain to ramp up communications traffic in coming months is “Infinite Campus.” The district’s new online student information system, it is entirely Web-based and used heavily by faculty and staff throughout the district on a daily basis. Parent access is expected to begin in April.
   Faster Internet connections will not only unclog some of the traffic jams encountered by all faculty and staff at peak usage times, but also provide teachers with more Web-based teaching opportunities for their students overall, according to district officials.
   ”This is really going to allow for new and expanded technologies to be introduced and enhance our programs throughout our K-12 curriculum,” said Mr. Brower.
   Under the terms of the contract approved by the board, the district will pay $17,000 per month to lease the fiber-optic cable for the next five years. The federal telecommunications rebate program, E-rate, will cover 38 percent of the bill, dropping the monthly payment to $10,700.
   Over time, however, the cost is expected to drop further as fiber-optic networks eliminate the need for hardware, such as servers and back-up equipment, as well as energy costs, effectively helping an organization consolidate its telecommunications infrastructure.
   Collectively, Mr. Schmidt estimates these combined savings to lower the monthly cost to $4,671. The current infrastructure costs $6,240 per month.
   When the contract expires, the district would have the option to buy the infrastructure at 10 percent of its original purchase price. If it does, it would no longer be eligible for the federal rebate, but the expense then would become purely operational — meaning the district would just pay for maintenance of the lines. There would still be a cost for the Internet connection, roughly $475 per month.
   Another benefit of the project is its potential as a regional shared service, Mr. Schmidt said. The district is using just one-third of its capacity of the fiber-optic cable, meaning it could invite interested municipalities or nonprofits, such as volunteer fire companies, to share space. Federal E-rate program restrictions prohibit such an arrangement so that could not happen until the sixth year at the earliest.
   Bob Colavita, business administrator, said he has met with Hopewell Township officials, who have said they are interested in such an arrangement, although not in the immediate future.