SRVUSD Implements InformaCast Bell, Clock and PA System

Posted on April 10, 2009 by admin

San Ramon Valley Unified School District Saves Time and Money with InformaCast Bell, Clock and PA System

[MUSIC] JOHN THRESHIE: We're a district with 31 schools in Northern California. We have about 24,000 students in our district at this time. And, we've got a fair amount of rapid growth going on, and so over the next four or five years, we're building I guess, it's four or five more schools. We have also had in process for the last three years a pretty large facilities bond measure in which we have been remodeling or modernizing -- I think we've done about half a dozen schools so far -- and we have another three that are just beginning.[MUSIC] We decided about a year and a half ago to go ahead and capture some pretty some pretty substantial construction cost savings by trying to go towards one wire type solutions. We found if we built our concepts in, of, you know, eliminating conduit and cable infrastructure, we found for the same money we could not only end up with a significantly superior telephone system for the school, but also start building a district based telephone system using the capabilities in call manager and other products as well. RIC JOHANSON: The beauty of the Cisco phone being that you can piggyback a computer right off the, off the phone. JOHN THRESHIE: About two years ago in conversations we had with Burbie's (SP?) Ken Biwater (SP?), we discovered that you know, the company was really ready at that point to start putting out addressable speakers and zoning controllers and all these kinds of things that would allow us to cost effectively build school live bell and P.A. systems, and help us go ahead and eliminate two or three more low voltage cable systems which was part of our construction savings goals. And, as I said before with call manager, one of our objectives was to end up with a system which had far better quality, but at the same cost; and InformaCast absolutely fit that bill.[MUSIC] CAROL LOFLIN: I have total access to communications systems throughout the campus right here on my desktop. So, we have seven buildings and there are no indoor walkways; they're all outdoor walkways. So, again, we need a speaker system that can project out to the playground as well as to the various wings because we're so spread out.[MUSIC] RIC JOHANSON: Well, typically there's two or several types of announcements that'll go out. There'll be a general announcement to the campus to a group of classrooms, say first graders, you might have an announcement that's made. So the principal will pick up the phone and do -- we don't do live broadcasts, presently we're doing recorded message -- the principal will dial in, get the prompt, record the message, hang up the phone, and the message is sent. CAROL LOFLIN: "Good morning, Quail Run students. We hope you have a wonderful red ribbon week. This morning we are announcing four winners for the character cake contest." RIC JOHANSON: For emergency application we created basically three scenarios: campus lockdown, shelter in place, fire drill. And initiated by the site staff or the administrative staff, either the secretary or their principal, becomes a choice into the services button. Campus lockdown will send a unique tone across all the speakers. The phones will display "secure in place" and that remains on the phone until the end user picks up the phone, makes another call, or cancels the page. So we show it visibly on the phone and it comes out audibly. CAROL LOFLIN: We were having conference week and students weren't on campus, but all this, teachers were here, and parents were here, and somebody had called 911. And, we didn't know who had called, but the police came here and so I was able to do a quick all call to find out who had made the 911 call on campus within a matter of seconds.[MUSIC] JOHN THRESHIE: The InformaCast is easy enough to work with that I'll get an email from a school office manager who says, "You know, for some reason the teacher in room 18 can't hear the announcements very well." So I open up the InformaCast and within a couple of minutes I was able to remember oh yeah, we changed that speaker level, and went ahead and did it. So, for a non-technician to be able to go in there and address those issues, and solve a problem you know, in a minute, is really a wonderful thing.[MUSIC]

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San Ramon Valley Unified School District (SRVUSD) encompasses the California communities of Alamo, Danville, Diablo, Blackhawk, and SanRamon as well as a small portion of the cities of Walnut Creek and Pleasanton. It is comprised of 28 schools serving more than 21,000 students in Kindergarten through Grade 12.

The Situation SRVUSD was experiencing rapid growth and needed to modernize many aging schools. These needs led to the construction of eight new schools and the complete modernization of ten more.

Facing construction cost inflation, SRVUSD was looking for ways to migrate to a district-wide telephone system and improve its school low voltage communications systems without exceeding its already-strained budgets.

To capture substantial cost savings, San Ramon Valley began implementing a ‘one-wire’ solution. They no longer used seperate wires for phone, data, and speaker systems. Rather, they ran the entire infrastructure on ‘one-wire’, providing significant costs savings, easy administration, and a very modern platform that is easy to expand.

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