School district wrestling with network outages

Lawrence school district officials said they are experiencing network outages this week that are affecting telephones, email and the district’s website.

District spokeswoman Julie Boyle said the problems are related to the process of installing new routers and switches that are part of the district’s technology upgrades being funded with the recent bond issue.

“The switch installations are in buildings that do not have major reconstruction plans — the high schools, middle schools and some elementary schools that are not being heavily remodeled as part of the bond issue,” Boyle said.

Boyle said installations at the other buildings will be done in conjunction with the remodeling projects. District officials have not yet decided on the schedule for those projects.

She said the intermittent phone and network problems began occurring Tuesday. Although she could not say how long they would continue, she said the current installation projects are expected to be completed before classes resume Aug. 14.

In April, voters in the district approved a $92.5 million bond, most of which is for upgrading and remodeling elementary schools, with particular focus on the six older buildings in central and east Lawrence.

That bond issue also included $6.5 million to upgrade technology throughout the district. Much of that is intended to expand the district’s wireless network to provide more bandwidth and enable schools to shift to “blended classrooms” that use a combination of online learning and traditional teacher-led instruction.

In July, the Lawrence school board agreed to purchase 212 Juniper network switches from JMA Information Technology, based in Overland Park, at a cost of $545,993.