For help in budget crisis, school district looks to wireless

Organizations have their own reasons for selecting certain wireless networks, suppliers and service providers. In the case of the San Marino Unified School District in Southern California, the specter of having to cut $2.3 million in spending due to the state's budget crisis is playing a role in its wireless decision-making.

The K-12 district plans to begin rolling out Motorola’s recently announced three-radio AP-7131 Draft 2.0 802.11n access points and a Motorola centralized management switch next month. The APs will eventually replace a patchwork of multivendor stand-alone 802.11b/g systems in hopes that centralized management will lower the district’s wireless operational expenses. But probably even more impactful to the bottom line, the district is also installing Motorola’s Canopy point-to-point and point-to-multipoint wireless bridges to interconnect the district’s four buildings.

The Canopy wireless backhaul products will replace AT&T’s OptiMAN fiber service, an innovative metro-area networking (MAN) service that allows the customer to increase or decrease bandwidth on the fly. The OptiMAN recurring monthly service fee “is quite high,” explains Stephen Choi, director of technology at the district, which supports four schools, 3,200 students and 300 employees.

The district has already whittled $1 million in costs out of its budget, but still seeks a projected $1.3 million in savings.

In addition to eliminating monthly recurring service fees by building a private wireless metro-area backbone among sites, Choi says he can use a common Motorola platform to manage the Wi-Fi network and the Canopy wireless MAN. The unified network management wrings additional OpEx out of the district’s budget while allowing Choi to “gain more control over our wireless networks.”

He notes: “We’re charged with finding cost savings in all areas,” indicating that such savings could go toward retaining teachers’ jobs and program offerings. The district’s Web site indicates that the cutbacks could also translate into a 35% increase in class size if savings are not squeezed out of the district elsewhere.