Board OKs tech, furnishings for new schools

By SALLY BOYD

Gazette Neigh­bors Editor

life@gazettepublishingco.com

One of the big ben­e­fits for stu­dents enrolled in the local dis­trict this fall will be their access to state-of-the-art tech­nol­ogy, a ben­e­fit for all grades thanks to the two new schools due to open in August.

Belle­vue Board of Edu­ca­tion, which met Wednes­day morn­ing in a spe­cial meet­ing, accepted the bids for loose fur­nish­ings and tech­nol­ogy for the two new schools, all of which came in under pre-bid esti­mates, accord­ing to Super­in­ten­dent Kim Schubert.

A sep­a­rate bid for new ele­men­tary school stu­dent desks and chairs was rejected because there was only one bid. A new Ohio School Facil­i­ties Com­mis­sion (OSFC) reg­u­la­tion man­dates the rejec­tion of such bids when there is only one bid­der; the pack­age will be rebid. Bellevue’s two new schools are being built with OSFC funds.

In the bid pack­age accepted Wednes­day, the board approved a con­tract with Zenith Sys­tems LLC to pro­vide data net­work elec­tron­ics and voice over IP tele­phones for the two schools, admin­is­tra­tive offices, high school and bus garage at a total cost of $285,750; audio/visual sys­tems from VEC Inc., $434,667; secu­rity sys­tems from Vaughn Indus­tries, $312,250; teacher, office and media cen­ter fur­ni­ture from Con­ti­nen­tal Office Envi­ron­ments, $635,710; class­room and mis­cel­la­neous fur­ni­ture from Tom Sex­ton & Asso­ciates, $311,773; and new mid­dle school stu­dent desks and chairs from Mar­tin Pub­lic Seat­ing LLC, $98,870.

Schu­bert said the sav­ings on the audio/visual sys­tems will allow active (white­board) board sys­tems to be installed in every room in both new schools. With new boards in place, the cur­rent white­boards now used in many of the dis­trict ele­men­tary and mid­dle school rooms will be moved to the high school, bring­ing upgraded tech­nol­ogy to that build­ing as well.

“I don’t know if the com­mu­nity appre­ci­ates this, but we couldn’t do this tech­nol­ogy with­out the new build­ings. So, thank you vot­ers!,” said board Pres­i­dent Dr. Ted Clark.

Board mem­ber Val Gore com­mented, “One of my goals in get­ting on the board was to upgrade our tech­nol­ogy. This is very exciting.”

Schu­bert also pointed out that along with the new white­boards will come spe­cial­ized pro­fes­sional train­ing so that all of the teach­ers will be able to use the new technology.

Rebid­ding for the rejected ele­men­tary fur­nish­ings bid will be announced in the future, with any mod­i­fi­ca­tions deter­mined by the district’s OSFC core team.

When asked what hap­pens if no more than one bid comes in again, Schu­bert said, “We just don’t know. This was a change imple­mented this past Novem­ber and we are the first to come up against this new rule.”

The board adjourned into exec­u­tive ses­sion to dis­cuss a per­son­nel issue with no action taken.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Feb 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.