Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash The Murray County BOE voted to spend nearly $2 million on supplying technology to students at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.

The Murray County School Board voted to spend nearly $2 million on technology for students including Chromebooks, wireless switches and bus “hot spots” to ensure all students had access to technology and internet.

The cost of the Chromebooks for students and teachers, Chromebooks with touchscreen for kindergarten, licenses and insurance, power strips, ear buds, adapters, and thumb drives came to $1.45 million.

Parents will be have to purchase the ear buds and flash drives at a cost of about $15. They will keep both.

“Purchasing the ear buds and thumb drives ensure we have what works with the Chromebooks,” said Steve Loughridge, Superintendent for Murray County Schools. “If parents want to buy other earphones, they can.”

This will allow all the students in the district to have a Chromebook with some in reserve for the next wave of students to start school. Bus hot spots, to allow students with no access to the internet to have it costs $28,127.40 and wireless switches will run $54,780.

The money for the wireless switches will be reimbursed next year through E-rate funds which is a program to help schools have internet access.

Gladden remodel update and changes

While the main scope of renovations at Gladden Middle School will remain intact, budget concerns prompted some items to be crossed off the list or moved to later dates after bids came back at a

Some of the original plans for Gladden Middle School had to be altered due to budget restraints, however, the main scope of the project remains intact.

higher than anticipated rate.

“Originally, when we first discussed this, we anticipated the bids to be a little bit higher when we added to the scope of the project,” said Loughridge.

The project was originally a new roof, but they decided to expand the kitchen, increase office sizes, remove the stage to create a multi-purpose room and replacing floors and the heating and air system. For a complete list, read our story here.

All the renovations were unveiled in February at the board’s meeting, held at Gladden.

However, the corona virus shutting schools down in March led to higher than expected prices.

“We looked for things we could do that wouldn’t effect the scope of the entire project,” said Loughridge.

On the cutting block are eliminated one air handler unit in the gym that was deemed unnecessary, changing the LBT flooring to VCT flooring, changing curtain wall glass to store front glass and eliminating new furniture. One eliminated item that will happen later is the control system for the heating and air systems.

“What we can do, is add that to the upcoming SPLOST referendum,” Loughridge said, adding that installing the system later won’t be anymore expensive than installing it now.

The next Special Local Options Sales Tax will be voted on in March 2021.

The total reductions come to $662,000, bringing the total down to $8.53 million.

Renovations have already started at the school, but even with schools closing in mid-March, the projects still a little behind, said Loughridge.

He said they will continue with the purchase of interactive televisions.

Photo by Damian Carr on Unsplash
Murray County schools made the decision to supply the rest of the bus fleet with new radios rather than waiting until the new budget year in July because of funds remaining in the budget after schools closed in mid-March.

Purchase of remaining bus radios

The system decided to purchase the remaining radios needed to equip all of the system’s 101 buses. The first half was purchased earlier this year, with the remainder to be purchased once the new budget went into effect in July.

But since the schools closed in March, the transportation budget no longer had to pay for the buses to run, allowing the system to purchase the radios which will be installed and problems worked out before the start of the next school year.