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District upgrades LAN/WAN, plans phone system and device leases as technology budget shifts to BOCES services
Summary
Technology director Andrew Taylor reported completion of LAN/WAN upgrades and ongoing server migration; the district plans a new phone/VoIP system and a multi-year device lease strategy, shifting many contractual lines to BOCES to capture additional state aid.
Andrew Taylor, the district’s instructional technology lead, told the Chappaqua Central School District Board on March 12 that the district has finished major LAN upgrades and increased the WAN connection between buildings to 100 Gbps, and that server decommissioning and migration to a hosted (Lyric) environment is underway.
Taylor said the district will implement a new phone/unified communications system this summer after an RFP process and that the phone system work is tied to security systems. "This is going to provide us better data security, better reliability...and better backups for our servers," Taylor said of the migrations. He also outlined classroom changes: complete 1:1 MacBook rollouts for Grades 7–8, replacement of more than 80 ViewSonic/BenQ boards, and expanded STEAM projects including an electric-vehicle program funded partly by the Chappaqua Schools Foundation.
On finances, Taylor said the technology budget shows a shift of more than $1 million from contractual spending to BOCES lines to capture aid and cooperative services; when reflected as a revenue line, the conversion would show a substantial increase in state aid and reduce the apparent district technology budget. He warned that three leases come off in 2026–27 and that the district must plan replenishment to maintain steady lease payments and device refresh cycles. "Our goal is to never make the line go up at all, kind of keep it steady, and do that through long-term planning," Taylor said.
Board members asked about the durability of the higher aid estimate in future years and about phone-system savings; Taylor said phone-line variables remain and estimated approximately $150,000 additional annual savings as a rough projection once services are migrated to a Regional Information Center (RIC) and BOCES arrangements. No vote was taken on technology items; the budget presentation will feed into later department-level budget sessions.
