Mobility/Wireless

Mount Vernon City School District in New York enhances education opportunities, improves communications, and more.

Located just north of the Bronx, in Westchester County, the Mount Vernon City School District serves 10,000 students in 11 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, 1 comprehensive high school (with academics, vocational education, art, and athletics), and 1 alternative high school for at-risk students who need a second chance. Its approximately 650 faculty and 260 staff members serve students from 98 ethnic groups; about 10 percent of students are learning English. Some students are homeless. Per-capita income in Mount Vernon is well below that of Westchester County as a whole.

"We're basically a poor district operating in a wealthy county," says Lou Adipietro, the district's former executive administrator for technology. Yet student attendance is 91 percent or better, and the dropout rate for 2004 was less than 5 percent. And beyond the numbers, the New York State Education Department selected three of the district's elementary schools as model schools.

In 2004, Mount Vernon began an ambitious plan to upgrade its network foundation and bring wireless networking to its schools. Now a Cisco Systems wireless network blankets all of Mount Vernon High School, much of the middle schools, the libraries in elementary schools, and the district office. As the new school year commenced in September 2005, Mount Vernon began increasing wireless coverage even more and provide network-based applications.

The network presents new opportunities for many of the students. To compete for 21st-century jobs, students need to get comfortable with technology and learn to work and find information online, but some of these students had spent little time at computer keyboards.

"Many of these kids don't have computers at home," says Frank Scanga, executive vice president of Axispoint, a Cisco certified reseller that is helping the district develop its wireless network. "To open a laptop and connect to shared resources and information is a tremendous experience, and a success for the school district."

Delivering Wireless Access to the Classroom

Although teachers and administrators benefit from the network, Adipietro insists that improving the learning experience was the most important factor in his decision making. The middle schools in the district have two rolling carts, each with 15 laptop computers and a printer; the high school has one such cart and several computer labs. Equipped with Microsoft Office and educational software from Classroom Inc. and Inspiration Software, Inc., the laptops improve student access to lessons in language arts, science, math, civics, social studies, and media literacy.

The network also helps teachers manage classroom business required by state law, such as taking attendance in each class period. Because classes sometimes convene in different classrooms, desktop computers aren't a good solution. But with wireless networking, teachers can carry laptops from room to room.

Extending Benefits Beyond the Classroom

The wireless network also plays a role outside the classroom:

• Special-education instructors use a Web-based program to manage student information and programs.
• At the high school, 60 security cameras link to the school's network, allowing anyone with proper security access to view them. Security guards and some staff use wireless-enabled personal digital assistants (PDAs) to view the live feed from any camera anywhere in the district.
• Staff members can use the same wireless PDAs to access student information to verify that students they encounter are in the right place.

Engaging Funding and Technology Experts

Choosing, installing, and configuring such a comprehensive, flexible wireless solution is complex, even for organizations with big budgets and technical staffs. The district's technical staff is small: two system administrators, plus two full-time and two part-time technicians.

For funding, the district relied mainly on the Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Mechanism, commonly known as E-rate. And to help it fulfill its wireless vision, the district wisely sought outside expertise from Axispoint, a full-service technology solutions firm serving the New York metropolitan area.

In 2004, Axispoint:

• Completed a site survey of the district
• Identified what equipment required replacing or upgrading
• Specified the new gear required for the project

Axispoint then helped create a phased implementation plan that included updating the district's wired network to handle all the services that the district would eventually need, such as wireless, IP Communications, and videoconferencing. Because of the district's need to protect sensitive student records, Axispoint's plan for the wireless network included both authentication to manage access and encryption to secure information.

A Foundation for the Future

Mount Vernon's network is poised to grow, both in size and function: A fiber-optic ring is replacing the T1 lines that connected the district's buildings, providing additional network capacity.

• More wireless access points will increase coverage, especially in the middle schools.
• More security cameras and wireless PDAs will increase student safety.
• The district will add voice communications to its network, enabling voice and data communications to share the same network and eliminating the need to maintain two separate communications networks.
• Teachers will get wireless IP phones, which will save considerable money in maintenance costs and toll charges for calls between district sites.

The network will support the following school operations over the course of the current school year:

• Expensive equipment in the high school, such as audio/video devices, will get radio frequency identification tags that communicate with the wireless network, allowing employees to easily confirm their locations.
• An interactive voice-response system will let parents retrieve homework assignments and class announcements from teachers' Web sites by telephone.
• The cafeteria will use the network to track which students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.

Joe McGrath, the district's acting executive administrator for technology, sees Mount Vernon's evolving network as the foundation for the district's future success. “Everything is starting to revolve around the network," he says. "It's as critical as having heat and electricity in the building. Without the network, the financial system doesn't work, and people don't get paid; nobody knows whether a student's in school or not; security cameras don't work; the library system doesn't work. The network can solve problems: It saves on staff resources, it saves on time. It's just more efficient."