Lawrence Public Schools (Shutterstock photo)

As the demands on the Lawrence school district’s wireless Internet system have increased, so have its problems. With the hiring of a Wi-Fi services and consulting firm, the district hopes to get to the root of the issues.

Since the district purchased a more than $1 million Wi-Fi system in 2014, problems with login, dead spots, weak signal and slow load time have persisted through troubleshooting. At its meeting Jan. 11, the Lawrence school board approved a $79,000 wireless site survey that will assess the system.

Kaitlyn Preut, a senior at Lawrence High School, said a couple of her classes consistently require use of the Internet or online material, and that the issues are frustrating and waste class time. Improvements to Wi-Fi would benefit students, she said.

“It will save a lot of class time of students having to wait a long time to get logged in or for things to load,” she said.

The 10,500 students across the district’s 21 schools all use wireless connections to some degree, but recent initiatives have increased reliance. The start of this school year brought increases in blended-learning classrooms that use online materials for instruction, as well as courses with digital textbooks. More than 90 percent of students use at least one digital textbook, and there are about 250 blended-learning classrooms.

Jerri Kemble, assistant superintendent of educational programs, recognized the need to fix the issues with the district’s Wi-Fi.

“We’re disappointed that there are a few places where there are dead spots or that it is slow at times,” Kemble said. “We want to be on top of that and make sure that we get things running as best we can.”

Part of that is having personnel to troubleshoot problems. Currently, the district has 10 building technicians to cover the 21 schools and district offices. Preut said she thinks having more technical support at the schools could be helpful.

“So that if a problem does exist that there is someone there to work on these technical issues,” she explained.

The Wi-Fi services and consulting firm Wireless Training & Solutions will conduct the site survey over a three-month period, as well as provide staff training. Kemble said the consultants will train the district’s one wireless technician, who will in turn train the 10 building technicians.

As far as what is causing the problems, Kemble said potential issues could be that there are not enough access points or Wi-Fi hotspots, or that the district’s wireless signal is conflicting with stronger signals that are nearby, which she said could be the case for schools located near Kansas University. Kemble said the consultants will determine exactly what is causing problems.

“Why are we having poor performance in certain places?” she said. “We need to know where the issues are, so this company will help us to identify that, fix it and then be able to maintain it.”

The first meeting with the consultants will be Jan. 28, after which the three-month survey will begin to determine the issues and the extent of changes needed to address them, Kemble said. Work on the system will be done over the summer, with updates in place for the beginning of the next school year.

“We want to close that digital divide and make sure that our students and teachers have access,” Kemble said. “That includes the devices and access to Internet as well.”