Lately, Chad Harter, Community R-6 School District superintendent, and Matt Jensen, the technology director, have been looking over some of the district’s long-term contracts in search of ways to …
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Lately, Chad Harter, Community R-6 School District superintendent, and Matt Jensen, the technology director, have been looking over some of the district’s long-term contracts in search of ways to save money and increase services.
At its Feb. 18 meeting, the Community R-6 School District Board of Education approved a $3,937.50 contract with Securly for web filtering and monitoring services. The contract will save the district about $2,700 per year, according to Harter.
Harter said the district is paying $4,900 per year for web filtering and classroom monitoring through Smoothwall and $1,701 per year for wellness monitoring through Gaggle. Securly offers comparable web filters, classroom and wellness monitoring, and a hall monitoring program with a “small school bundle” that will cost $3,937.50 per year if the district signs a five-year contract.
He added that the contract is not binding, and if the district is not satisfied with Securly’s services, it can cancel.
“That tells me that this is the Cadillac of web filters,” he said.
The addition of hall monitoring with a digital hall pass through Securly appealed to Bob Davies, Community High School principal, as he has been looking for ways to mitigate and log hallway traffic during instructional time.
Community students will have to request a hall pass from a teacher with their school administered iPads. The Securly pass program would then automatically check to see if the student has reached their pass limit, the destination is closed or full, or if another student in the halls should not be in contact with that student.
“If we’ve got a kid that has been out of the classroom, going to the bathroom first hour, and then goes and sweet talks going to the bathroom second hour and third hour and fourth hour, then we’ve got a problem,” Harter said. “We have hallway traffic that comes from that.”
Teachers can approve or deny requests, while administrators have access to reports detailing where students are going and how frequently.
“It’s been very effective in other schools — some bigger and some the same size,” Harter said.
