A plan to rewire every classroom at Austin High School was approved Monday by the Austin School Board.

Wednesday, June 27, 2001

A plan to rewire every classroom at Austin High School was approved Monday by the Austin School Board.

The project will cost $157,076, and will be done mostly at night by FS Technology Group.

They will replace the old wiring and terminal connections at 630 locations throughout the school building.

"You are going from a dirt road to a superhighway," Joe Stradcutter, vice president of FS Technology, said.

"How fast you grow into that superhighway is dependent on how many technology dollars you put into your hardware, your software, your training and your curriculum," he said

Larry Andersen asked Dan Noss, district technology services coordinator, why this update was not done when the school was remodeled.

"I am not going to second guess anyone’s ability at the time," Noss said. "Things do change, and that crystal ball can get awfully fuzzy."

"It will last a minimum of 10 years," Stradcutter said. "The components will be warranted by the manufacturer for 25 years."

"This is a typology that will allow you to put anything you can imagine on it. What we do is build for where you want to be. I can guarantee you that you will grow into the network," he said.

Board member Kathy Green asked Noss whether the project would take away educational space, but Noss said that FS Technologies would use closets that already are in existence.

Each area of the school will only be out of connection with the main server for three to four days. The project is expected to take four people three months to compete, and will be paid for by a capital grant and one from Hormel.

The high school annex will receive a new fiberoptic link to the main server, but the district offices have new wiring, and are not included in the contract.

Noss also demonstrated the district’s new Web site, which was done by Don Jones’ multimedia class at Austin High School.

"Without their dedication in creating the Web site, we wouldn’t be close to where we are," Noss said.

The site has teacher’s e-mail addresses and schedules. Noss plans on adding job opportunities to the site in the future. Additionally, only the high school and administrative units are linked so far.

"If we get the rest of the schools and the rest of the departments, it’s going to be a pretty big page," Noss said.

The new site, which has 108 pages of information, can be found at http://www.austin.k12.mn.us.

Call Sam Garchik at 434-2233 or e-mail him at newsroom@austindailyherald.com.