Seine River School Division completes technology upgrade projects

The Seine River School Division has finished three technology upgrade projects for its schools, including improving WiFi access, adding new calling systems for teachers and updating the paging system.

The division’s information technology manager Stephanie Callewaert presented updates on its projects that were completed during the summer months to the school board on Oct. 14.

The six-person IT team replaced 368 WiFi access points throughout the entire division, which offer boosted security, easier connections and faster speeds, she said.

“The ones that we had existing previously were end of life. So we not only had the opportunity to look at different options, but we also were required to make changes,” Callewaert told the board.

The new access points also don’t have licensing fees, compared to the previous version, which saves the division some extra cash, she said. The total savings weren’t mentioned in the meeting.

The team also migrated the staff phone system from a physical phone to integrating it through Microsoft Teams, Callewaert said. Due to much of the division already using Microsoft Teams, the transition period for teachers and staff was smooth.

Upgrades were done to the paging system at the Ste Anne and St Norbert complexes. Safety concerns were previously raised because both the high school and elementary school couldn’t page at the same time in Ste Anne, said Callewaert.

“If there was a lockdown in the complex, we could not send a page across the entire complex to alert everybody,” she said. “It’s obviously a safety issue if a classroom is being used by a teacher that’s reporting to the elementary school, but they hit the call button for assistance and it goes to a different school.”

Now with the new system anyone can make page and it will be heard across the entire building, she said, noting the changes were done before students began classes. The paging upgrades in Ste Anne and St Norbert are the first in the division, and the team is expecting to do more schools each year, Callewaert said.

Superintendent Colin Campbell applauded the technology improvements, calling them proactive.

“It’s a game changer for teachers to have the ability to contact parents from their classroom at the end of the school day, when there’s phone calls home for good news or struggling news,” he said. “Whatever the news is, there’s a lineup outside the one phone in the one quiet corridor, and now teachers have the ability to do that from the comfort of their own classroom and engage in conversation.”

No details were given on how much the three projects cost.