The Wheaton-Warrenville Unit District 200 board has approved spending more than $6.5 million over the next three years to upgrade its computer network and buy administrative software.
Launched in 1994, District 200’s computer network has grown from 50 administrative computers to more than 1,200 computers and printers–networked across 20 buildings–that access administrative and instructional software and the Internet.
A district technology study last year confirmed what students, teachers and administrators already knew: It was time for a new network.
“People were having difficulty accessing programs they needed, with long delays,” said district spokeswoman Denie Young. “So the district’s technology steering committee agreed it was time to stop putting additional hardware on the network until it could be updated to meet users’ demands.”
The district will also buy a broad software package that will allow administrators to link data from many different sources, including payroll, human resources, budgeting, student schedules, discipline, attendance and grades.
“We were finding that many state and federal reports that other districts can generate by computer were reports that we were generating by hand,” Young said.
The upgrades will be funded from an annual $1.5 million technology allocation and from the district’s approximately $1 million-a-year operations budget for the management information systems department, Young said.
