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Citrus County School Board approves $897,318 Vertex phone-system replacement
Summary
The Citrus County School Board approved a districtwide phone-system replacement with Mitel/Vertex, a turnkey solution costing $897,318 including five years of support; staff said it addresses aging hardware and a June end-of-support deadline.
The Citrus County School Board voted 4–0 to approve a districtwide replacement of its phone system with a Mitel/Vertex solution, staff told the board on April 28. The proposal carries a total price of $897,318 and includes server infrastructure, phone endpoints, training and five years of Vertex and Mitel “gold” support.
Kathy Androski, education-technology lead, said the district’s current system—installed in 2016—has reached end of life and that manufacturers’ support, and compatible hardware, is ending in June. “After June 2026, there’s no more technical assistance available, not from Mitel, not from Vertex on our current phone system,” she told the board.
The replacement plan calls for new phones at every district site, server infrastructure (virtual and physical), and a five-year vendor support contract. Androski said Vertex agreed to replace a majority of phone endpoints at a reduced per-unit price, which helped keep the overall cost under the district’s budgeted $1.1 million.
Board members pressed staff on procurement and redundancy. The district described the phone replacement as an excluded IT acquisition under state rules, and staff said they had met with other vendors before negotiating with Vertex. On redundancy, Androski said the phone‑system purchase is separate from an ongoing effort with the state’s SunCom Department of Management Services to replace phone-line infrastructure; SunCom services would introduce a four‑hour SLA for line outages and cellular failover plans for catastrophic fiber cuts.
Miss Counts moved to approve the Vertex phone-system replacement; Mr. Kennedy seconded. The motion carried 4–0.
The board asked staff to explore buyback or surplus-sale options for retired endpoints and to finalize coordination with SunCom so replacement and line-infrastructure work can proceed over the summer. Staff said they plan to deploy the phone system and phone-line upgrades together during the summer break to avoid classroom disruption.
What’s next: staff will finalize vendor paperwork and coordinate the summer deployment schedule; the five‑year support term will require renewal or renegotiation at its expiration.
