La Grande Pride
www.lagrandesd.org • March 2020
5
SUMMER 2020 FACILITIES PROJECTS
Meeting the needs of safety, security and functionality
By Trish Yerges
The La Grande School
District’s bond and facilities
manager Joseph Waite has
a schedule of upgrades, re-
pairs, remodels and instal-
lations that will be per-
formed during the summer
break. All of these projects
are important to the safety,
security and utilization of
the district’s facilities.
Top on the district’s
list of priority projects
is the door-networking
district-wide, as well as
hardware upgrades at the
Willow Street district office
building. This project was
started at the end of Febru-
ary and will be completed
prior to June 30, 2020
“As part of the bond, the
district added stand-alone
card readers at all perim-
eter doors at all schools to
increase safety and security
to all schools,” said Waite.
“In the new schools and
buildings, including Cen-
tral Elementary, the high
school’s CTE building and
Island City Elementary,
they were equipped with
networked card readers.”
The difference between
stand-alone units and
networked doors is that the
stand alone units require
a manual upload to pro-
gram the credentials for
allowing access to card
holders, whereas with the
networked doors, the infor-
mation is sent virtually and
updated within seconds.
“It was always the in-
tention of the district,”
he added, “to upgrade the
stand-alone locks. Funds for
this project were obtained
through E-Rate rebates.
Originally these funds were
denied due to a technicality
during processing of our
application.”
Howeve, business manag-
er Chris Panike tenaciously
stuck with the process of
appeals and persisted in fre-
quent communications with
the E-Rate managers until
they accepted the district’s
application and provided
the district the rebate work
of about $118,000.
This project includes
building a separate network
within each building that
ties into our card access
software housed at the
Willow Street district office.
This will allow the district
to respond much more
quickly to security needs.
“Lost cards can be deleted
from the system,” he said.
continued on page 7