Head of the class: CIO Kevin Palmer employs value-added services to solve critical network...

When Kevin Palmer took over as chief information officer of Missouri's Francis Howell School District two years ago, he was confronted with a mixed bag of poorly operated networks and technologies. The sprawling school district's communications network was a jumble of obsolete electronics and

One of the largest public school districts in Missouri, Francis Howell School District has 26 school and administrative buildings serving 26,000 pre-kindergarten-12 students, and encompasses more than 150 square miles. An estimated 2,200 teachers and staff are employed through the school district's four high schools, five middle schools, 10 elementary schools, three early childhood centers and four administration/support buildings.

While the school district has regularly received top honors as a leader in innovative teaching programs and student test scores, its network technology was far from being an award-winner.

"The school district's communications network for voice and data systems would go down regularly," Palmer recalls. "Entire buildings would fall off line for several days at a time, and in some cases, for as long as a two-week stretch. The network equipment wasn't always interoperable, so it was difficult to maintain. It was a very difficult environment in which to work."

The district's new CIO knew that the classroom environment could not operate with the existing dysfunctional technology. Classes could not connect to the Internet with any reliability, so teachers chose not to use it. PCs would not work, or would break down for several days at a time. Teachers were steering away from using the technology that was in place.

At the administration level, Francis Howell had recurring problems getting data on attendance or student grades transferred to and from its main database in a timely manner. The end result: district staff either would not use the technology or failed to use it properly to capitalize on the efficiencies it had to offer.

CABLE PLANT A MESS

"Even with our Web pages, teachers started going off-site and working at home to update their Web pages, because to update them here required them to put their changes on a diskette, and send them through the interoffice mail to a Web person, who was then responsible for actually updating the pages," Palmer says. "We lost the immediacy of that whole technology--the ability to update content on demand."

"Most of the wiring was very poor," Palmer adds. "There were no standards applied. We had a real issue with Category 3 and Category 5 wire in the walls terminating incorrectly. No resting or documentation on the cable plant had been available to work from."

School district patrons and parents regularly questioned the networks integrity. The situation was so critical that Palmer did not have time to research what the technology issues were costing the school district. "We knew it had to be fixed immediately. If you can't depend on the foundational technology, then you have a huge cost or increase in expense through the manual systems being created."

Palmer's first step was to create a horizontal cable plant as a foundation for the new vertical applications the school district wanted. "That cable plant is the lifeline on which we depend."

Palmer's challenges, however, were large and resources limited. His staff was small. His department operated on a fixed budget that was closely supervised by the district superintendent, school board members, teaching staff, parents and the voters.

"It was a challenge at times," he offers. "Our local community is very involved in the education process and is supportive of proven solutions. The superintendent and the board really challenged me to make certain I had the best solution, the best price and the best partners."

Palmer turned to the value-added services provided by St. Louis-based Graybar, a provider of supply-chain management and logistics services, and a leading North American distributor of electrical, telecommunications and networking products.

"I needed expertise that could come in and independently and objectively tell me what we were doing right and what we could do better," Palmer says. "With Graybar, we were able to identify priorities very quickly and easily. Their network systems specialist analyzed our cabling plant and network electronics, providing information that I could use throughout the justification process."

INFRASTRUCTURE ANALYZED FIRST

With Graybar's team, Palmer and his staff analyzed each buildings infrastructure, inclusive of cabling, connectors, electronics, logical configurations and how the buildings were interconnected. Once the physical inspections were performed, they reviewed the results, prioritized the work and assessed the time needed to complete the work. The entire assessment process took about two weeks.

"With every building, Graybar prepared an organized 'hit list' of items and potential problem areas," Palmer explains. "What they also did was provide information on the manufacturers out in the field. We literally had every manufacturer you could think of for connectivity."

Palmer decided to include Graybar's unique Verified Independently for Performance (VIP) standard within the school district's own cabling standard for integrators and installers to follow as the upgrades got under way.

"We needed to immediately step into a structured-wiring standard that we could count on, and we used the VIP 2000 program to get that standard in place," Palmer says.

The solution is designed for customers who need long-term installations or the capabilities of multiple-gigabit LAN and converged networking. Palmer says he particularly appreciates the performance assurances, which go beyond the TIA-EIA Category 6 channel proposal. He also places considerable value on VIP's third-party independent testing, which assures the school district that its installations would now be better prepared for future bandwidth needs.

"We looked at about five or six different connectors," he says. "We actually ran the tests ourselves--strung out about 150 feet of cable, terminated the different connectors and did the testing. We looked to the VIP 2000 standards to ensure the cabling we intended to use would be interoperable and work well together with the connectors and components we intended to install."

Based on Graybar's service solution recommendations and the VIP 2000 standards, Palmer decided on connectivity products from Siemon and cabling from Mohawk to serve as the infrastructure for the school district's new cable plant.

Palmer set a tight multiple-phase project timeline to keep momentum moving on the network upgrades. "The phases were much more piecemeal than anything else," he recalls. "For instance, we looked at the elementary schools, which were the worst-case scenario, and we hit those networks first."

The school district worked with local installation companies like Telecom Systems International, Sachs Electric and Netcom; and manufacturers' representatives, such as Thomas L. Dowell & Associates, to help with the upgrades. "Working with the distributor, the manufacturer's rep, the installers and the integrators requires everyone to work together, and as long as everyone is following the same standard, the outcome is going to be successful."

SOME SNAGS ENCOUNTERED

About 18 months were needed to completely reterminate, rewire, test and document the buildings and the network electronics throughout the school district. The progress, however, was slowed by a few time-consuming surprises.

Palmer recalls one problem building in particular. "At one elementary school, we had Category 5 cable, but it was all incorrectly terminated. We knew right away we were going to spend two weeks reterminating everything and testing it out. We were able to identify that problem through Graybar, and then we had our own internal technician go in and do the reterminations."

Even the central administration building carried surprises within its walls. Palmer and his crew were initially stumped when testing a section of Category 5 cable. "When we brought the network environment up to 100 megabits, switched, we found that one whole wing of the building quit operating."

Using a tester supplied by Graybar, they found the problem. "There was a non-standard interconnect hidden in the ceiling, which many of the drops on that wing were terminated upon. Using the tester isolated the problem and the distance to the interconnect, thus shortening the trouble shooting to minutes.

"There were many minihubs plugged in throughout the district," Palmer continues. "At virtually every building, we'd have to ferret out minihubs, taking them out of commission and flipping new drops into place. That was another nightmare."

Palmer observes that the training Graybar provided with the manufacturers' representative from Mohawk was a real blessing. "Between the two of them, they came out and helped train the staff by holding classes and seminars for our technicians on proper copper terminations, fiber installations and terminations, and structured cable management."

With the school district's horizontal cabling foundation firmly in place, Palmer says Francis Howell is reaping the rewards of the technology upgrades, which cost about $500,000. "The foundational technologies, including the network switches, the infrastructure, the wiring, the connectors and the servers, are all in place now."

VOIP APPLICATION INSTALLED

The first major vertical application--voice over IP--is a Cisco AVVID solution, at a cost of about $700,000. About 1,600 phones are being installed in 18 different buildings. Each classroom will have its own phone, and have at least one PC.

Palmer cites a positive ROI for the VoIP project. "First, we saved $350,000 in wiring costs, because with a reliable network we didn't have to put ill a parallel voice pathway, and we were able to use the existing cabling pathway.

"Second," he adds, "we saved above our conservative ROI calculations almost a million dollars per year in teacher productivity simply by putting a phone in each classroom. Just last year, in order for a teacher in make a telephone call to a student's parents, for example, he or she would have to make the call from the school office. That is, if they were lucky enough not to have to wait in line behind other teachers or administrators."

Palmer says this phase of the VoIP upgrades is just the beginning. "We have voice installed now, which provides the ability for new vertical applications, such as time clocks, security systems, grade card and attendance applications. With the reliable network infrastructure, there are a number of different applications that can be launched into the classroom."

The upgrades also are expanding Francis Howell's ability to utilize video-on-demand applications, streaming video throughout the district and into the classroom from the convenience of the teacher's desktop computer. The school district also is finalizing plans for expanding its distance-learning capabilities, which Palmer says used in be a cumbersome learning experience, at best.

"Previously, we had four locations throughout the district that were hard-wired through ISDN connections for our distance learning. They were rarely used because the teacher had to make an appointment, and move the classes to the distance learning-enabled location. It was more like a field trip than what a regular class period could really handle, so that technology was grossly under-utilized. And, using ISDN was very expensive."

Palmer credits Graybar with "identifying some of the things we were doing with ISDN lines, dial-up, and recommended various improvements."

ADDITIONAL USES PLANNED

"By having this network in place, we're now able to roll a cart into a classroom, with a TV and a distance-learning camera, plug it into the network, or, as we're just now starting to do, utilize a wireless card, and it's ready to roll. Be cause it's going through the building LAN and district WAN, we're able to actually connect in no time flat, at minimal or no cost."

Currently, Francis Howell is using Graybar's VIP 2000 standards to raise the bar on performance and value for its newest elementary school. "We are able to detail exactly what we need to make this new school technologically sound and allow us to build upon this infrastructure for the next 10 to 20 years," Palmer says.

"Once we finish with the voice-over-IP solution, we're looking at things that we can build into that infrastructure, which is built on our network cable plant and Cisco-powered network electronics," Palmer continues. "Things like new intercom systems, with very cost-effective speakers and amplifiers that work through the network wiring and the Cisco phone system. We're also planning on installing some cost-effective, yet higher-end surveillance systems that work with the new network. We're now able to monitor three of the 26 locations, but eventually will be able to centrally monitor all of the different buildings, if necessary.

"What our kids, their parents and the entire district have been able to benefit from is a stable and reliable system that now delivers product in the form of correct attendance and grades, and it's in real time," he adds. "With attendance equating to a 'revenue stream,' which the state uses to calculate and disburse funds back to the district, the reliability of the entire infrastructure is critical.

"The flip side of this network is the communicative applications. We now have a really sharp and useful Web site that's updated continually. We also have an application called 'ENEWS' that allows district parents to get daily announcements from the school their child attends, as well as emergency and district-wide announcements. We have over 12,000 subscriptions for 'ENEWS,' which is built upon the new capabilities of the district network and the technology, team's ability to deliver."

At the end of the day Francis Howell's CIO credits Graybar's strong teamwork, resourcefulness, and reliability in offering the best technology alternatives that led to this project's success. "Graybar clearly worked to our advantage," he says.

About Graybar

Graybar, a Fortune 500 corporation and one of the largest employee-owned companies in North America, is a provider of supply-chain management and logistics services, and one of the nation's largest distributors of electrical, telecommunications and networking products, Through its network of 250 North American distribution facilities, Graybar distributes electrical and communications/data equipment and components from thousands of manufacturers to hundreds of thousands of customers every day.

Robert Reynolds is chairman, president and CEO of St. Louis-based Graybar. A 31-year Graybar veteran, Reynolds began his career at Graybar's Boston facility, progressing through the organization in various sales and operations jobs before being appointed vice president, communications markets, in 1991, when he moved to St. Louis.

Reynolds was later promoted to senior vice president for the communications/data business, and, in July 2000, was appointed president and CEO. He was elected chairman of the board in April 2001.

Through third-party testing. Graybar's VIP (Verified Independently for Performance) program verifies cabling manufacturers" product-performance claims, both in a controlled laboratory setting and in the field. ETL SEMKO Testing Labs, one of the largest product testing organizations in the world, modernly selects product to be tested directly from existing Graybar inventories.

The open architecture of the program allows customers to select the VIP-approved manufacturer of their choice. VIP also assures customers that their installed structured cabling systems will exceed TIA/EIA standards and meet the interoperability standards of IEEE/Category 6.

For more information from Graybar: www.rsleads.com/401cn-252