District approves new Chromebook leases for all Triad second- through fifth-graders
By Charles Bolinger
Editor • Mike Wielgus, the district’s director of technology services, asked the superintendent and board on March 23 for approval regarding a Chromebook lease for all second- through fifth-grade students (1,200 devices) for the 2026-2027 school year and he received it.
“This is the last group of Chromebooks that remain from COVID funding, so those are five years old,” he said. “Once we get re-established in this cycle, we won’t have Chromebooks older than four years, ideally, moving forward.”
The lease agreement with Trafera Financial Services out of Minnesota is for 36 months and will cost $176,050 annually. The devices will be Lenovo 100e G4 Chromebooks.
“These devices will come with the hard shell cases like we have purchased for
middle and high school students,” Wielgus said.
“In addition, we are seeking approval on a five-year lease with ITVoice to refresh our 10-year-old telephone system. This system will provide us with new phones district-wide, will be Cloud-based and will also replace aging fax and elevator lines.
It’ll provide “new technology, new devices and a cheaper rate; it’s all a win-win-win in our book,” he added.
He told them that the Carehawk Intercom and Bell System were successfully installed at Henning Elementary during the first week of March.
“We now have the new system at Henning and Silver Creek and we are seeking approval tonight for installing this system at Marine Elementary over the summer months.”
In other action, Wielgus is planning for future district technology needs.
Depending on student populations, schools with a larger student population will be required by this April to comply with a company that takes a district’s PDF documents from the Web site and converts them to ADA compliance. Triad has until next April but Wielgus decided not to wait.
“The rep showed us how to take a fillable-form and make it actually fillable by re-formatting the entire thing. It can read things to people in another language or it can be read over a telephone to someone, should they desire that.”
He said the cost is reasonable and it was timely to do rather than wait until 2027. Finally, he discussed one last item.
“Last week, we submitted our Form 471 to Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) as part of the E-rate process, to formally request a funding commitment for the following items: network cabling and supplies for the new middle school, network switches to handle the increased capacity from the new building projects, battery backup (UPS) devices to replace end-of-life equipment, renewed licensing for our wireless and switched infrastructures and a new district-level firewall.”
