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Piedmont schedules large summer IT upgrade: 750 Chromebooks, full network replacement aided by E‑rate funding
Summary
The district ordered 750 Chromebooks to replace high‑school devices and will replace all network switches and access points across three campuses this summer, funded largely through the federal E‑rate program; Spectrum increased the district’s school connection from 1 Gbps to 2 Gbps.
Michael Stocks, Piedmont’s chief technology officer, told the board on May 20 that the district ordered 750 Chromebooks for the high school and expects shipment the week of June 2. Stocks said the board’s quick approval allowed the purchase before new tariffs, which he estimated saved roughly $75,000.
Stocks also outlined a major network refresh funded through the federal E‑rate program. He said the district will replace every network switch and wireless access point across all three campuses this summer, a project that requires scheduled outages because internet services are routed through the middle school campus. The district’s commercial internet connection with Spectrum has been increased from 1 Gbps to 2 Gbps.
The CTO said E‑rate will cover a substantial portion of the retail cost for networking equipment: the raw retail price reported in the packet was approximately $280,000, with the district’s discounted cost budgeted at about $113,000 (E‑rate discount level noted as 60% in the packet). Stocks said the state will reimburse the district for the E‑rate discount as part of the normal reimbursement process.
Stocks said the vendor has configured equipment offsite and the plan is a one‑for‑one replacement that should generally limit each phase’s downtime to under a day, though he cautioned there may be outages during work. He said he will notify staff with specific dates once scheduled.
