Old, overtaxed computer system idles students and teachers

NORTH PROVIDENCE - When School Committee member Stephen Palmieri paid a visit to the high school on a recent Monday morning, he was greeted by an unwelcome surprise. All of the computers were down at the school and had been that way since the previous Thursday.

The problem apparently had affected all of the district's schools, though it did not affect the central administration building on Mineral Spring Avenue, which is on a different server.

Palmieri said he learned that day the district was waiting for a price estimate to solve the problem. Although steps had been taken to getting the system back up and running, the situation was inexcusable in Palmieri's view.

"You can't wait days on issues like this," Palmieri said at the Oct. 28 School Committee meeting. "Something like this could end up costing $20,000 to $30,000 to fix. If we need to fix something, let's move on it."

According to Ney Bezerra, the technology coordinator at the high school, the department was not able to get anyone in to look at the system until Monday because it does not have an emergency service contract with its service provider.

"The problem that we had was with the infrastructure," Bezerra said. "It was a switch that runs connections that is over 12 years old, beyond its useful life. This connection is above the size of the wire. The infrastructure needs to be fixed to fix this problem."

In the meantime, faculty and students at the schools were idled by the problem. Computer classes were left without anything to do, while the main offices and guidance department were left without access to many of the programs that they use several times a day.

"This has been an ongoing concern of this committee for a number of years," said School Committee member Donald Cataldi. "No one seems to want to say exactly what the problem is. We've never had a backup. Maybe this is something that needs to be discussed in another forum so that we can get to the bottom of it."

The ensuing discussion at the School Committee meeting among Palmieri, high school Principal Joseph Goho, and Assistant Superintendent Giovanna Donoyan revealed that this glitch was just the latest in a long string of technology problems affecting the schools.

"The computer problems that happen at the high school are ongoing," Donoyan said. "We have a technology coordinator at the high school who deals with a lot of different issues. Most of the issue with our technology is that most of our technology is not as up-to-date as anyone would want it to be. That's a function of financial resources, but there's also a tremendous amount of stress on the infrastructure as you all know because everyone is using the computers."

Unicom, the company that the district uses for issues like these, came in later that Monday and assessed the problem. However, their solution was only a Band Aid on a growing problem. What is ultimately a $36,000 issue was fixed temporarily with some new switches that cost the department about $5,000, Donoyan said.

"While we need to update our technology, to do so costs a lot of money," Donoyan said. "Right now we need to be fiscally responsible."

As money is especially tight right now, the School Committee had to make a number of concessions to arrive at a manageable budget for this school year. Technology is an area that did not receive as much funding as perhaps is necessary to prevent issues like this from becoming chronic. Even in the best of financial times, the cost of overhauling the computer system for an entire district is prohibitive, making smaller updates and temporary fixes much more palatable. However, North Providence is reaching the maximum utility of these short term measures, officials said.

"Basically we have this black box that controls the system and (Director of Non-Instructional Services) Armand (Milazzo) knows more about that system, but basically what we need to do is upgrade that box," said Superintendent Donna Ottaviano. "But all the time we've done things like gotten a separate server that handles our databases. We've upgraded what we've had to upgrade according to the state standards, but technology is a very costly endeavor. A computer itself becomes obsolete very fast. We do what we can."

According to Ottaviano, the district has somewhere between $100,000 to $200,000 in technology funds, not enough to cover the major overhaul that is likely in the near future. In addition, North Providence has roughly $36,000 in state aid to technology funds that is generally used for network upkeep and internet access each year. Despite this shortfall, the School Committee will begin the process of drafting a proposal for tech companies to bid on updating the system.

In the meantime, the department can only expect its technology issues to linger.

"The whole issue is an onion, where you keep peeling it to see new problems," Goho said. "And there will be another problem eventually. There needs to be an urgency to fix this."