Breaking: Teacher to be Added

Last night, the Board unanimously approved adding one teacher for the next school year to work at the Middle School. More to follow......

Phone System Hang Ups?

When District 3 approved its new, $29K phone system, one of the selling points of the proposal was that the new system would be cost-neutral, or very close to that, because the new system would give the district more bandwidth than it needed. The school district would then lease the extra bandwidth to village agencies, such as the Library, to recoup the costs of the system.

According to sources familiar with the proposal, the Library's decision to lease District 3's phone capacity is not exactly a done deal.

As mentioned in a previous post, the initial cost savings projection provided to the Library amounted to more than the Library spends for phone service (which might prompt the question: Will the Library receive one lump payout of the "savings", or would checks be sent on a regular basis?). Subsequent cost-savings analysis provided to the Library did not give that board a good estimate of what the costs would actually be by leasing the District 3 phone capacity, and what the actual savings might be. For the past couple of months, the Library Board has not even discussed the topic in its meetings.

According to sources, the Library Board is still open to the idea of leasing the phone capacity. The Library likes the idea of helping District 3 recoup costs, and likes the idea of improved phone services; however, the Library does not appear to be in favor of any changes that will increase its costs for phone service. If all things were equal, of if cost savings were reasonably demonstrated, then the Library might still go ahead with leasing phone service from District 3. Without these assurances, though, District 3 may have to find another way to recoup the costs of its new phone system.