LITTLE ROCK — County schools’
faster Net nearer
Internet service to several Pulaski County Special School District schools is on the verge of becoming faster and more powerful.
The 17,000-student district is working with AT&T to upgrade bandwidth over the next year to 18 months, said the district’s chief technology officer, Derrick Brown.
Once the installation of the fiber-optic cable is completed, students and staff at the schools will have quick access to online lessons and online resources, and even to online exams.
Gone will be the long waits, or the inability to connect to Google Earth, or to hold a videoconference via Skype or take a virtual field trip, Brown said.
“It’s so exciting,” Brown said about the prospects for the district. “This is what I came here to do - put our students and staff into the 21st century.
“We already have the technology. We have interactive white boards. We have iPads. We have 4,300 new computers that were deployed last year. We already have everything in the schools to engage the students and prepare them to be global learners. Now this will be the highway,” he said about the expanded bandwidth.
“We built this brand-new house, but we’ve been living on a dirt road,” he said. “Now we are going to have a five-lane highway.”
Only Daisy Bates Elementary in southeast Pulaski County and the Jacksonvillearea schools will not be served by AT&T, which is waiving the costs of digging and laying the cable to each school curb, Brown said.
Other options for expanded bandwidth are under consideration for Bates and the Jacksonville schools.
Jacksonville is served by a different Internet provider, not AT&T. Jacksonville High does have faster Internet service from that provider, CenturyLink, to comply with the terms of its multimillion-dollar federal school-improvement grant, Brown said.
Maumelle High and Sylvan Hills Middle, the district’s two newest schools, along with Fuller Middle and Mills High schools, also already have expanded bandwidth.
Public-relations
honors received
The Pulaski County Special School District’s communications office has received two awards from the National School Public Relations Association.
The district won an award of merit for distinguished achievement in marketing the district through a consistent brand. An honorable mention was awarded for the district’s social-media efforts.
There were more than 700 entries from districts throughout the country in multiple categories pertaining to schooldistrict communications.
The communications department is staffed by Executive Director of Communications Deborah Roush, Webmaster Rob Moffett and Communications Coordinator Janet O’Neal.
Superintendent Jerry Guess said the honors are a credit to a department “that gets reliable, up-to-date information to our patrons and public through multiple channels, including an ever-changing website, Facebook and Twitter.
“Communicating in a 740-square-mile district that incorporates several cities, 37 schools and more than 17,000 students is a 24/7 commitment,” Guess said.
Longtime educator in state dies at 86
J.K. Williams of Bryant, a longtime Arkansas educator who most recently served as executive director of the Arkansas School Boards Association, died last week at age 86.
Williams headed the association from 1978 to 1992 after serving stints as superintendent of the Dumas School District from 1954-58; the Paragould School District from 1963-65; the Blytheville School District from 1965 to 1970; and the Pulaski County Special School District from 1971-78.
Blomeley quits as spokesman
Seth Blomeley, the Arkansas Department of Education’s director of communications, resigned from the post last week.
He began the job Feb. 28, 2011, at an annual salary of $82,256.
In his July 12 resignation letter to Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell, Blomeley, 41, said he will seek other opportunities.
Blomeley prev iously worked for 14 years at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, most recently as the newspaper’s state Capitol bureau chief.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 07/22/2012