School board to mull technology overhaul
IT director: 93% of district computers obsolete
BY COLLEEN LUTOLF
Staff Writer

BRICK - Does a computer have as many lives as a cat?

Leonard Niebo, director of the school district's information technology (IT) department, doesn't want to find out.

"The computers are in the middle of their third life," Niebo said at the March 23 budget presentation meeting. "The computers are still chugging along."

Some of the district's 2,700 computers, 96 percent of which were purchased in February 1997, take as long as 12 minutes to log on to the Internet, said Niebo, who is one of 3.5 staff members in the district's IT department.

"In a 45-minute class, that's classroom instruction time lost," he said.

Currently, 93 percent of the district's computers are obsolete by state Department of Education (DEP) standards, he said.

Within weeks, when updated standards are issued by the DEP, that figure will probably rise to 96 percent, Niebo said.

The approximately $359,000 that is tentatively allocated in the 2006-07 $129 million school budget will only maintain the outdated system, Niebo said.

Although 250 new computers at about $1,000 apiece are budgeted for next year, those allocations are taken from each individual school's budget, not the IT budget, Niebo said.

But a complete overhaul is necessary, he said.

Part of that is to install "dark" fiber, meaning that the fiber will solely belong to the school district.

Currently, the district rents its WAN (wide area network) from Verizon for $650 a month at 14 schools, totaling $9,100 per month, he said.

"If we privately owned the fiber, we could do what we wanted with it."

That would cost $750,000 over five years, he said.

Yet, over a 20-year period, the district would realize $4.5 million in savings.

Niebo urged the board and the public to start considering how they want to fund the technology overhaul.

"This, at some point, has to be a community goal," schools Superintendent Thomas L. Seidenberger said. "Somewhere along the line, we're going to have to bite the bullet."

Board members discussed presenting the project as a referendum question to be approved by voters, but school Business Administrator Nicholas Puleio said that could prove costly, and voters may turn down the initiative.

The bonds could also take as long as 20 years to pay off, despite a computer's life lasting only three years.

Another option would be to borrow $3.5 million and defer payment until the 2007-08 budget, Seidenberger said.

Either way, "no district has the capacity to put together that kind of money," he said.

The district needs to put in place a refresher plan, so it doesn't find itself in the same position in another 10 years, Niebo said Monday.

If the district allocates $800,000 every year, it wouldn't need to come up with $5 million every 10 years, he said.

"Then you're not dealing with a huge chunk every single time," said Niebo.