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District flags software and cyber‑security price jumps; staff to provide itemized breakout
Summary
Staff told the board software and licensing costs rose by about $69,000 year‑over‑year, largely due to vendor rate increases and added disaster‑recovery/cybersecurity needs; the district removed $34,000 of low‑use products and will supply a student/teacher/infrastructure breakout for the February meeting.
During the budget review the presenter outlined a roughly $69,000 net increase in software and contracted IT services for the coming year, most of which the presenter attributed to vendor rate increases on existing products and additional disaster‑recovery and cyber‑security licensing requirements.
Staff said they eliminated approximately $34,000 of low‑utilization products from the list and that about $41,000 of the remainder is for curricular or student/teacher software while a significant portion (about $30,000) supports district‑level infrastructure and cyber‑security. The presenter said some vendor buyouts drove steep price increases for a small number of products and that switching platforms would be costly because of recent investments in backup and disaster‑recovery systems.
Board members asked for a clearer breakdown of software by purpose (student/teacher vs. district infrastructure) and requested an itemized slide or report for the February budget meeting. The presenter committed to providing that breakout and noted that cyber‑security spending is partially driven by insurance requirements.
Next steps: staff will prepare a detailed software inventory, usage statistics and a categorized cost breakout to help the board identify potential consolidations or eliminations.
