Information Technology Advisory Committee - Aug 20th, 2020

It's capital request time again. The library's IT capital request should be submitted next week, and Steve offers to work with the Library again. DPCD is interested in acquiring permitting software, and David will meet with Jenny Raitt from the Planning Department to discuss. The fire department has been using management software called Fire House. It's nearing end-of-life, and the fire department is considering other packages. The IT department plans to submit 7 capital requests this year (but only six are active).

The town has ordered 700 Chromebooks and 1000 iPads for students, along with distributing several hundred MacBook airs to teachers and staff.

David Good says he's found a company that's willing to buy a batch of the school's used Mac Pros.

The IT department distributed 1000 pieces of computer equipment in March and April, to be used for remote learning.

The Parmenter school is almost ready to re-open. Fiber lines are in, and just need to be terminated and hooked up to the switch network.

Arlington is upgrading several of the town's circuits from 100 mbit to 500 mbit.

The original VoIP project is complete, and we've added two more buildings for VoIP installation: the Parmenter school, and new administrative offices for the Arlington High School.

Utility billing upgrades continue. Town staff are working on upgrading several Munis forms.

The central school phone wiring is in, and new A/V equipment should be installed next week. Podium and A/V upgrades in the town hall auditorium are complete.

648 new students registered this year. 481 of these are new kindergarten registrations. 26 additional kindergarten registrations are still pending. Five students withdrew from the public schools.

The school district steering committee has devoted a lot of discussion to learning models. Special education classes will be held on site, with socially-distanced classes of five students or less. High school classes will be fully remote. Other grades will be hybrid or fully remote. The hybrid model would have students in school two days/week.

The town purchased 25 hotspots for families who don't have internet access at home. The school district is paying for these hotspots.

The Office 365 project is delayed. We need to upgrade our Active Directory server and domain controllers, so they'll work properly with Office 365's hosted environment.

A lot of resources were devoted to provisioning remote access and learning equipment. We may set up a separate helpdesk/ticketing system for remote access problems.