Gainesville City School students may need more access to technology, regardless if the district returns to face-to-face instruction in the fall as planned, or if they must take school from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Gainesville City School Board approved the purchase of outdoor Wi-Fi antennas for each school building on Monday with the goal of connecting more students and families to internet access.
"Tonight (Monday) I'm bringing you the recommendation to approve for us spending up to $40,000 for the purchase of outdoor Wi-Fi antennas." said Jill Hobson, Chief Technology Officer with the school system. "This will allow us an opportunity to provide internet access through out own high speed internet and make that available outside the building."
The outdoor access point will serve a minimum of 50 users and can provide coverage up to 300 feet. Each school will have three or more access points to serve 150 users on average, simultaneously.
"The community can either drive up or walk up, then use the internet, even if the school building is not open - on the weekend, at night, or in the event that we should be in another situation where - for any reason - we'd need to have the building closed, this would give us a way of providing the community that option," said Hobson.
The Wi-Fi will be public, so parents who need to use the internet for things like paying bills or using other online services can do so, however it will be limited and filtered.
"It's firewalled off in the sense that there's no way to jump from being on that guest network to having access to any of our internal files or servers," said Hobson.
Final site selections have not been chosen, but once locations are selected the district will post information on where the access points are and how users can connect on the District and School websites.
The Department of Academics and Wraparound Services played a part in getting the antennas this far, Hobson said. The school system has also purchased access points for the Elephant Express buses and "MiFi" devices that students can check out from the system.
