KENOSHA – The Kenosha Unified School District was recently awarded $1,941,727.38 in funds. This program allows public educational entities (i.e. school districts, libraries) to apply for monetary assistance related to network internal connections, broadband services and basic maintenance (commonly referred to as category 2).
In December 2014, the federal government modified the E-Rate program to allow for current technologies. These funds will be used to complete equipment purchases and installation for an improved educational environment related to access of instructional materials and resources.
This amount, along with $725,000 approved by the board of education for 2016-17 improvements, will benefit all KUSD buildings and provide an equal level of access to resources.
Each instructional classroom will receive a dedicated wireless access point, along with the necessary infrastructure components to manage nearly 16,000 wireless devices. The current network supports connections and access to almost 28,000 total devices for nearly 22,000 students and more than 2,500 staff.
Installation of over 1,200 additional access points and replacement of over 450 network switches is tentatively scheduled to start in January 2017 and expected completion is late summer 2017.
These connections will more than double the internal bandwidth capacity between each KUSD building. This improvement will allow for more reliable and stable connections across the network and its related services. Over the last year, KUSD has worked to increase its overall bandwidth to the internet, moving from 2 GB to a current level of 10 GB – five times faster.
This level of access addresses the recent growth of online curriculum, resources and mandated assessments used by students and staff. This level of accessibility will permit faster access to a variety of internal applications and cloud based utilities for all KUSD stakeholders.
Under the current E-Rate application process, KUSD is still eligible to apply for remaining E-Rate funds, and will continue to pursue options to help improve the overall network environment.
