Technology department reports system upgrades, 8,400 Chromebooks and stronger data controls
Summary
Technology staff reported districtwide upgrades including UPS battery backups, a LAN migration, new servers at each school, ParentSquare adoption (reaching 99.5% of families) and about 8,400 active Chromebooks with 2,600 slated for end-of-support in 2027.
Trey Chaney, presenting the technology department's annual update to the Morgan County Schools board, said the district completed a summer project to install UPS battery backups across its network infrastructure and upgraded core systems to improve reliability and security.
"We added battery backups to every network" Chaney said, explaining the change will help keep communications and the core network online during power outages. He told the board the district migrated to a single LAN provider to consolidate internet and transport services, purchased new domain controllers and installed new servers at each school to improve authentication and system stability.
The department also modernized classroom intercoms to work with the district's voice-over-IP phone system so each room now has an addressable extension, Chaney said. He described shorter patch cables and reorganized racks to make troubleshooting easier and faster.
Chaney said the district launched ParentSquare last fall as its districtwide school-to-home communications platform and "we are now reaching a 99.5% of families in Morgan County schools." He added the district is migrating to a new website platform, SmartSites, with a target launch in spring 2026 pending a 16-week migration schedule.
On operations, the technology department implemented a ticketing and asset-tracking system (Instant IQ) and a staff-facing knowledge base that Chaney said will centralize guides, training and standard operating procedures. "We just don't know where everything is," he said of legacy asset records, calling asset discovery a work in progress.
Chaney said the district updated data-governance procedures in May 2025 after identifying compliance gaps and joined the Alabama Student Data Privacy Consortium to rely on existing vendor agreements. The district is piloting the Alabama State Department of Education GARN platform to manage software requests and publish a public product library.
He reported the district has about 8,400 active Chromebooks, "and about 2,600 of those are they're gonna end support in June 2027," noting device-refresh planning will be needed. Since June, Chaney said the help desk closed 2,027 tickets with an average resolution time of about 4.3 days; 798 of those were Chromebook-related.
Chaney closed by describing a new incident-response plan for security events or disasters and privilege-management software that requires tech approval before installations. Board members thanked the technology team and had no substantive objections.
The board did not take any formal action on the technology report; Chaney said the department will continue planning for device replacement and website migration.
