Triad’s director of technology services provides June update
By Charles Bolinger
Editor • Mike Wielgus led off his portion of the Triad School District board meeting on June 22 with the latest student enrollment numbers for the 2026-2027 school year.
As of June 18, 2,804 returning students registered, along with 233 new students for a total of 3,037 students. Wielgus provided an enrollment update: about 100 more students enrolled as of June 22, putting the new total just over 3,120 students.
School student enrollment breakdown is as follows: 145 at St. Jacob; 107 at Marine; 470 at Silver Creek; 599 at Henning; 756 at TMS; and 960 at THS. Henning has the most new students to date with 103.
One of the items approved that evening was a request for 40 additional Newline Interactive Flat Panels to replace aging projectors district-wide. The is the third summer Triad has bought these products, he said. The 40 new panels will give the district around 130 of them along with 55 projectors, he surmised. He said next year will be a larger purchase due to inclusion of all the current middle school teachers who have not adopted the new technology before they start teaching in their new building.
The new Chromebook computers for second- through fifth-grade students have arrived. Plans are being made to distribute them.
Related to that, all of the previous Chromebooks collected at the end of the previous school year have been cleaned and updated. Repair work will continue as needed. The best of these units will be added to the district’s fleet of loaner machines and issued to newly hired classroom aides. Others from last year will be retained for parts and replacements for same models the district still uses. Wielgus added that more than 500 of these older Chromebooks have been packaged to sell.
Also, students last year had an opportunity to buy their Chromebooks for $30; more than 450 units were sold.
“I’d like to offer my appreciation for the high school technology summer workers helping our department this summer,” Wielgus said. “They have been meticulously going over all Chromebooks that were collected at the end of the school year to clean them up, fix them and prepare them for repurposing this fall.”
Metro Communications completed installation of the district’s new one-gigabyte Internet circuit. It will act as backup to the primary circuit and carry voice traffic for the new phone system, effective July 1.
“If we have an Internet outage on our main line, it will automatically switch over to the back-up,” Wielgus said.
As for those new telephones, all phone numbers and extension numbers have been created and the units have been delivered to their respective buildings. Inventory and installation will begin soon while Wielgus and his team finalize programming the system and bring them online during July.
On other technology fronts, Wielgus reported that they ordered battery backups and a new Internet firewall. Firewalls typically have an eight-year lifecycle he told the superintendent and board.
Wielgus said at Marine Elementary, headend equipment has been relocated, fiber optic cables have been run throughout the building, a new equipment closet on the second floor has been built and more.
At Triad Middle, meetings will be held soon to coordinate door access and security and low-voltage network wiring. Similar meetings will be held at Triad High for the same items.
The next Triad School Board meeting is July 27 at 6:30 p.m. at the district’s administration building, 203 E. Throp St. in Troy.
