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Polk schools consider digitizing brittle historic records after storm damage
Summary
District staff and vendor Cofile (Kodak subsidiary) presented a plan to scan and OCR historic board minutes and other records after hurricane-related moisture damaged paper archives; board members asked about ownership, security, retention schedules and costs.
Polk County School District staff and vendor Cofile Technologies outlined a plan July 29 to digitize and preserve decades of paper minutes and other official records after several sets of bound minutes developed mold and mildew following storm damage.
Cofile representative Trey Sissom told the school board the district holds unique, brittle records — some the only copy — stored in climate-controlled cabinets but damaged over time. He said digitization with high-resolution capture and optical character recognition (OCR) would make the materials searchable and available for legal and public records needs.
The superintendent said staff identified the vendor after post-hurricane moisture raised urgency to protect records needed for title/property questions and other official uses. Sissom estimated the collection includes roughly 500,000 pages across two rooms and described a preservation workflow that avoids roll-through scanners and uses overhead capture and conservation treatments.
Board members asked whether images and files would remain the district’s property, how secure the repository would be, and how long the district is legally required to retain various records. Sissom said digitized images would remain the district’s intellectual property; access would be password-protected and behind the district’s firewall. He said the vendor could also provide copies via FTP or external drive.
Superintendent Hyde and board members repeated that a district retention schedule governs how long categories of records must be kept and that some records are permanently retained while others have shorter statutory periods. The superintendent said counsel would confirm precise statutory retention timelines for particular record classes.
Next steps: staff will provide the board a retention schedule and final contract terms, including security controls, ownership language, pricing and an annual hosting/maintenance fee option. Board members flagged the need to confirm which boxes and binders include minutes versus other materials and requested a clearer inventory and cost estimate before a contract vote.
Ending: The presentation prompted follow-up questions about retention periods, repository ownership and long-term access. Staff said they would return with the retention schedule and proposed contract language for board review.
