District staff propose switch to Cisco Webex phone system, citing cost savings and Alyssa's Law readiness

Adam Dennison presented a proposal to replace Romulus Community Schools’ aging on-premise phone system with a cloud-based Cisco Webex platform, saying the current system — installed in July 2016 — is increasingly obsolete and recently suffered a hardware failure.

Dennison summarized projected costs and benefits: the original 2016 installation cost was $115,659; last fiscal year the district paid roughly $36,436 to AT&T for phone service plus about $21,000 for softphone licensing (a combined figure the presentation characterized as nearly $58,000). The recommended Webex contract would cost about $30,000 annually on a five-year agreement, with an additional one-time purchase of roughly $50,000 for physical phones. Dennison said the change would eliminate on-site servers, consolidate services, and is already bid statewide through a REMSI contract.

Dennison also said the Cisco Webex platform supports features tied to Alyssa’s Law (dedicated programmable emergency buttons) and that adopting the platform would put the district “already in compliance before the law comes out.” When trustees asked about web-based reliability and precautions, he said the district had installed an E‑rate-funded redundancy line that will provide automatic failover to AT&T if the Internet fails: “If our Internet goes down, then it switches over to that other line.”

Dennison told the board he will bring a formal recommendation and the authorization for the annual contract to the next board meeting for a vote. No final procurement motion was taken at the Feb. 9 meeting.

Board members pressed for logistical details and training needs; Dennison said the transition could be done over the summer, building by building, and would require limited professional development days for staff.