Norwich school phones are ringing once again

Officials will seek state safety grant to replace faulty system

Norwich — The public school phone system is working again, at least for now.

School officials aren’t convinced the 2-year-old system that crashed at the start of the school year has been fixed permanently and will apply for a state safety and security grant to replace the system.

“I don’t feel safe and secure right now,” school board member Rashid Haynes said Monday, agreeing with administrators seeking grant funding just two years after receiving multiple grants to pay for the entire new $385,000 system for all 14 district buildings.

The phone system crashed at the start of the school year, at first leaving all city schools without service. The problem lay in the Toshiba hardware installed by contractor Pilot House. The Toshiba phone division closed a year ago, and school officials could not find technicians to service the system.

News of the outage, reported at last Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, spread fast on news outlets, and tech companies came to the school district’s aid, including American Business Telephone and Technologies of Manchester, which did work for free, school Business Administrator Athena Nagel said. By then, about half the phones were working.

None of the companies working on the system — including Frontier Communication, Pilot House and American Business — found one direct cause of the outage, Nagel said. They simply kept trying one line at a time, testing it, fixing it if it didn’t

work and moving to the next one.

“It was like ‘Christmas Vacation’ with the lights,” Nagel said, “pulling one and trying it.”

School officials aren’t convinced the problem is solved for the long-term, and are preparing to replace the system. Superintendent Abby Dolliver said the district will apply for a state safety and security grant through the state Department of Administrative Services for a new phone system. Officials also discussed the possibility of joining the system installed last year for city government and Norwich Public Utilities phones.

That system was estimated to cost $700,000, but Dolliver said school phones would not need to be as advanced as those used by the utility — with features such as video capability — so the final cost could be lower.

Either way, the school system’s project would have to go out to bid before any new system is selected.