District details summer facilities, security and technology upgrades ahead of school year
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Summary
District staff reported completion or near-completion of multiple summer projects — paving and HVAC work, access-control and visitor-management rollouts, camera replacements and classroom AV upgrades — and warned of a temporary bus-driver shortage as school starts.
Facilities and operations staff told the board on Aug. 4, 2025, that several summer projects are complete or on schedule, including paving at the Hayes parking lot, a completed chiller installation at Willis, and a district-wide access-control and security camera replacement program that will go live early in the school year.
A facilities staff member said the district completed paving work at Hayes and that keys and access badges were distributed for assignment. On security, Jen Fry reported the implementation plan covers access control for 68 doors, eight visitor-management kiosks, 365 camera replacements and 11 environmental sensors. She noted the district will pilot environmental sensors at Dempsey and Hayes and that initial priorities are at school building entrance doors.
Fry said campuses will use a Verkada-based visitor-management system; Spanish-language support is being added by the vendor and will be rolled out when available. “Those have all been set up at the buildings,” she said, adding building office staff and principals have been or will be trained before the first day of school.
Facilities staff also alerted the board that the district will operate 50 bus routes this year but has lost about five drivers since the last school year. “We’ll be starting off the school year with staff driving buses daily,” the staff member said; three or four drivers were in training at the time of the meeting and applications continue to come in.
On technology, the district replaced 30 interactive boards with flat-panel displays and Apple TV/iPad combos, deployed 450 Chromebooks for incoming sixth graders at Dempsey, migrated to a new phone vendor and completed a STEM camp for staff and students over the summer. The district’s long-serving network administrator, Jamie Williams, resigned in July after nine years; the district announced a new network administrator, Harry Smith, will begin on the Monday following the meeting.
Food-service leaders reported summer meal operations and partnerships with community groups served 1,597 student meals at Woodward’s seamless summer program and said federal reimbursements will allow free meals for students with free or reduced-price eligibility in 2025–26. The board later approved a purchase of a new oven for Dempsey Middle School from Hubert for $12,435, funded from the food-services fund.
Board members asked staff to share training materials for visitor check-in with principals and to be mindful of language access for non-English speakers. Staff said they will add other languages to their implementation checklist and continue training for administrators and front-office staff.
Ending: District staff said they expect the projects to be fully operational within weeks of the school year’s start and asked the board to monitor driver staffing levels as routes begin.