Board approves server, virtualization and monitoring changes to consolidate technology and alarm oversight

District staff and board members discussed and approved several technology and safety items March 9 aimed at consolidating systems and improving reliability.

Board approval included a Washington Township server upgrade and a contract with UberTech to migrate the district's virtual servers from Broadcom/VMware to Microsoft Hyper‑V; the meeting referenced an initial quote of $13,000 for part of that work. The board also approved a phase‑3 camera upgrade funded by the district bond program.

Separately, staff described persistent monitoring and alerting problems arising from mixed vendor setups across buildings — door‑open and false‑alarm notifications, and intermittent phone‑line failures during wet weather that interfered with daily tests. Staff recommended consolidating monitoring with Emergency24 through Bridal Electronics to reduce vendor finger‑pointing and improve response. "They won't talk necessarily directly to us because they're under contract with the vendor... we're trying to get everything simplified so that we can actually have conversations about our own buildings," staff said during the discussion. The board approved the migration, noting an approximate $20,000 scope of project fixes (some already incurred) and roughly $4,000 annual monitoring costs cited in the meeting.

Board members emphasized these steps are intended to improve safety and streamline vendor accountability; the motions do not create open-ended financial commitments beyond the voted approvals. Staff will proceed with procurement and scheduling and report back on timeline and costs as work is contracted.

Next steps: Technology and facilities staff will schedule the server and virtualization migration, complete camera installation planning, and execute the monitoring migration and vendor onboarding for Emergency24/Bridal Electronics.