Education cooperative board OKs tech upgrades

FARMINGTON — The Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative Board of Directors on Thursday unanimously approved $165,000 in technology upgrades to its building on North Double Springs Road.

The board approved the upgrades at its monthly meeting.

The work will be paid for with $150,000 of American Rescue Plan funds the cooperative will receive, said Bryan Law, cooperative director. The cooperative is required to put 10% of its own money toward the project and has dedicated $15,000 from its general fund toward the work.

“Each co-op needs to have a little skin in the game,” Law said of the requirement. “If we’re going to do these things, we need to be able to put a little of our own money in to show our commitment.”

The full scope of the work to be done hasn’t been decided, Law said, though there are initial plans for about $38,000 in projects.

“We’ll take it in phases,” said Jeremy Schlinker, cooperative technology director.

Initial money will be used to help the cooperative better host presentations, Schlinker said.

The cooperative has learned a lot about the value of technology during the covid-19 pandemic, Law said.

“How we present and what we do is different now than how it used to be,” he said, noting technology is the backbone of the presentation process.

Three of the cooperative’s smaller presentation rooms will benefit from the initial upgrades, Schlinker said.

The existing projectors in those rooms will be replaced with 85-inch monitors with sound bars, he said. The rooms will also be equipped for wireless casting and the presentation laptops will be replaced with touchscreen laptops.

“The plan is if they are touchscreen laptops and they’re wireless projecting, the presenter would have the ability to walk around the room with the device and annotate over the top of documents or whatever they want to do,” Schlinker said.

The upgrades will give the cooperative cutting-edge capabilities and cost about $31,000 to complete, he said.

“Our second proposal will focus more on a network infrastructure upgrade,” Schlinker said.

As much as $8,000 will be dedicated to move access points, replace or update switches and improve the building’s overall wireless capabilities, he said.

Most of the cooperative’s wireless routers are in the center of the building, resulting in unreliable connectivity to the outer offices, Law said.

“Some of our technology is just not up to date,” he said. “It’s OK for you and I to Zoom one-on-one, but you put 50 people on there, and all of a sudden it pulls everybody down.”

Jared Cleveland, Springdale School District superintendent, said he looks forward to the impact of the technological upgrades.

“I think the upgrades are needed,” Cleveland said. “If you look around the co-op, they’ve done pretty well for what they have, but a lot of it’s aged.”

Work is anticipated to begin within the next two months and will take up to four months to complete, Schlinker said.