Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
William Penn SD IT proposes RingCentral VoIP to replace failing PBX, board raises privacy questions
Loading...
Summary
District IT reported an end-of-life PBX phone system with recent outages and proposed switching to a RingCentral VoIP platform; staff said the change would cost about $60,000 a year versus hiring an additional technician and offered demonstrations and privacy mitigations for teachers.
Justin Falcone, William Penn School District’s supervisor of information technology, told the Property Committee the district’s current Iwatsu PBX phone system is at end of life and has produced multiple outages recently. "We have had 4 outages in the last 2 weeks," Falcone said, describing difficulty getting replacement parts and the district’s reliance on outside vendors.
Falcone proposed moving to a RingCentral cloud-based VoIP system. He described features the district would gain — softphone clients on laptops, IP handsets for stationary desks, district directory and four-digit dialing, interactive voice response and E-911 support — and framed the change as a long-term maintenance and safety improvement.
On costs, Falcone said the district currently spends about $14,000 a year on Comcast telephone lines and that a RingCentral deployment would roll that amount into a new cost structure of roughly $60,000 per year. He contrasted that with the prospect of hiring an additional in-house technician, which he estimated would cost about $168,000 per year fully loaded, arguing the system option would be more sustainable over five years.
Board members focused on classroom privacy and operational continuity. Jan Tong, Property Committee chair, asked how calls would behave during class presentations; Falcone pointed to standard controls such as "do not disturb," scheduled call windows and use of headsets. "If you don't want to be disturbed, you hit do not disturb," he said, and offered to arrange an in-person demonstration to show how the system would work in district settings.
Falcone acknowledged the internet dependence of VoIP systems but said the current situation already depends heavily on cell phones and vendor support; he argued the RingCentral client on district devices would be a more reliable and manageable solution overall.
Next steps: staff committed to additional information gathering, a demo for board members and follow-up about privacy mitigations and device deployment. No formal motion or vote on the phone replacement was recorded during this meeting.
