With school officials anticipating the launch of the Infinite Campus student information system on Monday, March 31, and with growing demands placed on the district’s technology network, the board is looking to add one full-time equivalent employee to the technology department next year. This position, along with many other items in the budget, will be presented to residents during a public hearing on Tuesday, March 25, at 7:30 p.m. at Grover Middle School.##M:[more]##
The $153.5 million budget overall is up by $6.3 million — a 4.3 percent increase — and includes a local tax levy increase of 3.5 percent, with West Windsor residents seeing a 3.2 percent increase in their tax bills, and Plainsboro residents seeing a 5.9 percent decrease.
The amount to be raised through taxation in West Windsor is $78.1 million, up from last year’s $75.7 million, and in Plainsboro, $49.9 million will be collected from residents, down from $53 million last year.
The school board attributed growing enrollment, an increase in salary, wage, and pension costs, and a rise in fuel costs to this year’s budget increase. As a result of growing enrollment,the board added three teachers at the high school level, a guidance counselor at High School North, a teacher at the middle school level, a custodian, and the technology staff member this year.
As WW-P school officials continued to discuss the 2008-’09 $153.5 million budget at the school board’s meeting on March 11, the demand on technological resources and tech support was the main focus.
Steve Mayer, the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, told the board that there have been revisions and upgrades of the technology infrastructure for the past few years now, including the addition this past fall of 52 SMARTboards to classrooms around the district, and teachers’ usage of iPods as instructional tools. Students’ use of online sources, databases, and reference sites during the school day has also increased.
But over the past few years, this “15-fold increase” has created challenges for those in the technology department. The amount of storage on district servers has tripled, and “the mail connectivity is at capacity for approximately three hours every day,” Mayer told the board.
Because of all of this demand, the tech support staff have shifted its focus “from what teachers are doing in classrooms” in order to “migrate into network support.”
At the same time, officials are also concerned with aging classroom audio-visual equipment, including monitors and projectors, Mayer said.
One additional FTE would support the district’s goals of implementing the Infinite Campus program, and allow for restructuring of the building technicians, so that someone could be responsible for the K-5 Mac-based infrastructure system, and another could be responsible for the 6-12 PC-based infrastructure system, Mayer said.
Board member Stan Katz said, though, that in lengthy discussions at the board’s finance committee level, “the general consensus was to neither encourage nor oppose the additional one FTE.”
“We all felt that there was a need for it,” Katz explained. “The only question was whether there was a real priority for it.”
Technology director Rick Cave said that the most obvious area where the department could use the extra help is with the audio-visual technology, which “really doesn’t have a single person designated to support them.”
While the technology department has been trying to get people there to fix problems with audio and visual equipment, “that process is severely hampered” by demands elsewhere, he explained. “Techs as well as facilitators are pulled in different directions.”
Because the network is being used more frequently, some employees are needed to keep an eye on the network to ensure it is sufficient to handle the demands, Cave said. Because of this, “computers don’t get repaired as quickly as they could.”
He said that adding Infinite Campus will further increase Internet use and could hinder students who are in classrooms trying to use the Internet.
The new student information system comes with innovative features, one of which is the ability to allow parents to check on their students’ progress. During the meeting, High School North student representative Peter Maa said some students were concerned that their privacy might be invaded by parents accessing information and monitoring every single aspect of their academic lives, putting more pressure on them. School administrators said, though, they will determine which features — including the one to allow for parental access — will be enabled after holding discussions on the new features. This will come after the basics of the new system are up and running in the spring.
The entire system is web-based so teachers and administrators can access information from anywhere at any time. It also serves as a district-wide data warehouse, allowing student data to be entered once and leveraged across the entire district. The goal for the first year, Cave said, is to duplicate what the school district has already done with its old data system, SASI. Then, it will slowly start introducing the other features.
“On March 31 what we’ll have is what we’re doing now with SASI, which will be replaced,” Cave said. “That will give us the rest of the year to dig in deep and make sure everything is OK. Starting in the fall, we’ll start doing more functionality. It’s not going to all roll out in the fall.”
With regard to maintenance, Cave said during the school board discussion that there have been very few maintenance problems with the SMARTboards, but each projector that is needed in order to use the SMARTboard has a filter that collects dust from the fans, and those projectors need to be cleaned every two to three months.
“It’s not an easy unscrew to take them off,” Cave said, referring to their locations in the classroom.
In other budget discussions, the board also looked at elementary school enrollment projections. Enrollments at two elementary schools are projected to increase. Principals’ estimates show Dutch Neck School — which currently has 656 students — and Maurice Hawk School — which currently has 845 students — will increase to 674 and 858, respectively. Board committee projections, however, show Dutch Neck to have 668 students, and Maurice Hawk to have 857 next year. The Wicoff School is projected to have virtually the same enrollment, with current enrollment figures showing 389 students at the school now, compared with both the principal’s and the committee’s projections showing 390 students next year.
The remaining three elementary schools are projected to see a decrease in enrollment, with Town Center Elementary, which currently has 731 students, having a student population of either 728 (according to principal’s projections) or 714 (committee’s projections), next year. At Village School, the current population of 680 is expected to drop to 672, according to principal’s projections, or 676, according to those of the committee.
Millstone River School saw the biggest decrease, with 797 students currently enrolled, compared with the principal’s projections of 755 students, and the committee’s projections of 772 students, next year. For this reason, there will be a reduction of one teacher at Millstone next year, and staffing shifts on the elementary level district-wide, depending on where enrollment numbers officially fall, Mayer said.
“Class size across the board is remaining positive and is strong,” Mayer told the board. He said most of the elementary schools will be sharing resources and personnel.
