Board discusses one-year extension of tri-district technology consortium; Zoom licensing cited as main recent use

Oak Park–River Forest School District 200 staff asked the board to reauthorize a one-year extension of a tri-district technology consortium that lets three neighboring districts combine purchases to gain volume discounts.

The agreement — originally approved in December 2016 and renewed previously — has been used mainly to buy pooled Zoom licenses during and immediately after the COVID era, staff said. "That agreement basically lets us work with the districts in a combined way to purchase things," Eric Hamels, the district’s director of technology, said. He added the consortium “is at 0 cost to us, and it it seems like it's been very, very helpful when we need it.”

Board members asked whether the consortium could secure deeper discounts if more districts were added. Staff cautioned that adding districts increases management workload and can dilute a single district’s influence in vendor negotiations; one board member noted the district’s prior role in a larger purchasing cooperative for local-food purchases had been time-intensive for the lead district. Staff said the consortium currently includes Districts 90, 97 and 200 and that recent purchases have been limited to annual Zoom licenses.

Staff also described other areas where the districts sometimes find common ground, including security software (Raptor) and attendance/time-tracking systems; those systems are not currently uniform across the three districts, so opportunities are sporadic. Board members suggested the consortium’s contract language be clarified to reference technology specifically when it is rewritten after the extension ends.

No formal vote was recorded in the committee of the whole; staff said the extension will be brought forward for board approval at the next meeting as part of the finance section of the agenda.