By Naomi Hatch Last week, members of the Snowflake School District Governing Board approved four items related to E-rate, a federal program subsidized by telecommunications carriers to help provide telecommunications and data communications for school districts. The competitive bidding process for E-Rate has been ongoing this year for the district, according to a memo written by L.T. Director C.C. LaGrange, who was unable to attend the Feb. 9 meeting. Superintendent Hollis Merrell made the presentation in her stead. This year a request for quotes was used for phone and long distance services. Proposals were received and evaluated for these services based on the guidelines. LaGrange asked that the long distance service and telephone service contracts be awarded to Frontier, and that the cellular phone service contract be awarded to Verizon. A request for proposals for category 1 service to install new fiber optic cable from Taylor Elementary School to a pedestal at Snowflake Junior High School was posted. That cable would connect those schools to the main hub of the district cable and complete a ring wide area network (WAN) service between the two towns. “E-Rate has not approved that project to date,” LaGrange noted in her Feb. 3 memo. “This may or may not get funded,” said Merrell, advising that even if it were awarded, the district would not be obligated to accept a contract if it doesn’t have the funding. Merrell said that the state is trying to assist districts with WAN bandwidth improvements and plans to match fiber optic cable projects with state funding, which would provide a savings of 20 percent to the district, but the district must file a new request for proposals in order to take advantage of the state matching funds. LaGrange reported that the project would increase the bandwidth speeds of Snowflake High School and Snowflake Intermediate School to 10GB transmission speeds, and would complete the fiber optic cable ring from the towns of Snowflake and Taylor. LaGrange and Merrell were recommending approval of the vendors chosen for long distance, phone and cellular services, as well as posting of the revised request for proposals so the district could take advantage of the state match if that program is approved.
