Sweet Home School Board members last week approved a project to improve internet service at the school district’s four elementary schools by next fall.
The board unanimously approved a contract with FatBeam Fiber of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to establish a new fiber connection between the district office, at 1920 Long St., and Foster, Hawthorne, Holley and Oak Heights schools.
The district currently leases a 200-megabit-per-second (mbps) fiber connection from CenturyLink/Lumen Technologies to supply internet to those schools.
“Basically, in a real boiled-down way, this is an opportunity to upgrade facilities for our elementary schools to prevent bandwidth and other problems,” Supt. Terry Martin told the board.
The project will be contingent on receiving federal E-Rate funding and a grant from the Connecting Oregon Schools Fund, he and Business Manager Kevin Strong said.
FatBeam bid $775,000 for the project, and will charge a monthly service fee of $1,475, 80% of which is expected to be funded by E-Rate.
Strong said the district will save money because it’s currently paying about $4,000 a month for wifi service from CenturyLink, 80% of that reimbursed.
E-Rate funding is a program of the Federal Communications Commission, not the Department of Education, which is currently under scrutiny by Trump Administration officials. Martin pointed out that cellphone customers pay a monthly “universal service fee” to contribute to the program.
E-Rate funds provide discounts for telecommunications, Internet access, and internal connections to eligible schools and libraries.
A second bidder, WanRack, came in at $2,141,764 for the project, and offered a $5,950 monthly service fee.
In a report to the board, Strong noted that FatBeam, which advertises itself on its website as “the fastest growing fiber provider in the West,” with more than 150,000 fiber miles of connections across eight states and more than 150 cities, has recently completed larger projects, similar to Sweet Home’s, for the Bend-LaPine and Tigard-Tualatin school districts.
District Technology Specialist Sam Nothiger told board members that current wifi capabilities at the grade schools is 200 mbps, “which is acceptable for now, but is on the “lower end” of what will be needed for schools in the future.
He noted that not only does the district have E-rate funding, but also has Connecting Oregon Schools Fund monies available, which would provide a 10% state match and gap funding for the project.
“This is the kind of opportunity we need to take advantage of,” Nothiger said, adding that the project stands to cost $1 million.
The FatBeam project would improve speeds to 10 gigabits per second (gbps), with the ability to scale up to 100 gbps. Currently, Sweet Home High School has 42 gbps.
That capacity, Nothiger said, “goes beyond what our equipment currently is able to handle.”
Currently, he said, the 200 mbps capacity limit creates “a big bottleneck,” particularly “if they’re watching videos, streaming music.”
He said the project, which would require trenching and boring to install underground fiber lines, should be completed “sometime next fall.”
Strong said that when the project is completed, “our elementary schools should be pretty well set for the next couple of decades.”
Board Member Floyd Neuschwander noted that even if the E-rate program ceased to exist, “we’d end up paying about the same at full price as we are with CenturyLink with the discount.”
Strong agreed.
“All the way around, this looks to be a pretty good deal for our kids, our staff, our district.”
In other action, the board:
♦ Accepted resignations from Alejandra Rue Rico, a Spanish teacher at the high school; Oak Heights kindergarten teacher Mary Beth Lundy; and Michael Stevenson, a counselor at Foster.
♦ Heard results of the district’s annual audit, which a representative of the district’s accounting firm, Pauly Rogers of Tigard, described as “clean, no issues.”
Strong noted that “clean” does not mean the district isn’t in financial trouble, but that it is “in compliance with acceptable auditing principles and standards.”
“There are districts in Oregon that ended with a negative fund balance,” he said. “They could receive a clean opinion because their financial statements accurately show where they’re at, even though they’re in the red.”
The primary purpose of the audit, he said, is “to make sure our financial statements are accurately presenting our financial picture.”
Also, he said, auditors review the district’s “internal controls,” which are the responsibility of both the board and district administrators.
♦ Heard from Martin that districtwide student enrollment at the end of January was 45 students lower than at the end of December, a drop from 2,227 to 2,182.
Martin said those numbers are not unusual for this time of year and “elementary numbers have stayed very stable.”
The high school, which dropped from 731 to 690 during the past month, had some students graduate early and “a large number 10-day drops,” he said.
Hawthorne School won the SPARK Award with the district’s highest attendance percentage for January, finishing with 91.7%.
♦ Viewed a lively 14-minute video presented by Maintenance Supervisor Josh Darwood that highlighted the work and completed renovation project at Oak Heights School, which included new flooring, wiring, ceilings, windows and a new roof, new siding and paint, new gutters, new doors, new library space, a new HVAC system, a new entrance that includes concrete benches, and bike racks located where the former entrance was.
Darwood credited Gabe McCubbins’ team, who did not only what they were contracted to but “did other things that came up,” and Gerding Builders, “who stood out” in making the project happen, most of it during the summer break.
“To have a project of this magnitude, that we’re trying to tear apart and put back together in an eight-week window, is a pretty crazy thing to try to bite off,” Darwood said.
To view the Oak Heights video, visit www.facebook.com/sweethome.schooldistrict/videos/607360995399742.