IPcelerate.com

Customer: East Central ISD

About the Customer

East Central Independent School District is located in San Antonio, TX. The District offers quality K-12 education to approximately 8,900 students, and consists of four K-3 elementary schools, two intermediate schools, two middle schools and one high school. East Central ISD is in the process of renovating and expanding the high school, which is due for completion for the 2010 school year.

Initial Expectations from VoIP

East Central ISD closed off half of the high school for renovations, and placed 22 portable trailers on campus to serve as temporary classrooms during the 2-year construction project. The school needed a way to communicate to these mobiles and selected VoIP as the most cost-effective solution.

Addressing Primary Business Challenges

The biggest challenge with holding half the classes in portable structures was that the bells – signaling the end of a class period – could not be heard outside the main building. For the first 2-3 weeks of the 2008 school year, the school secretary used an egg timer to time the length of a class and then manually sound the bell. The school also used bull horns to notify students that it was time to move onto their next class. Both solutions were disruptive, inefficient and unreliable. East Central needed a cost-effective solution that could integrate into their existing infrastructure, and selected IPcelerate to solve this challenge. With IPcelerate’s Paging solution, the high school was not only able to address the audible bell necessity, but could also better manage all communication between the main building and all mobiles.

IPcelerate Solutions

East Central utilized IPcelerate’s Zone Paging solution to create a zone which encompassed all the IP phones located in mobile classrooms. They then created a bell sound and uploaded it to the IPsession server as a pre-recorded page. The IPsession server was also integrated into the existing PA system. Today, the bells are sounded through the IPsession paging application and are heard in the main building over the PA system and in all the portable classrooms over the IP phones.

The school can also send pages directly to an individual mobile, or to the entire mobile zone. They have also created a distinct bell tone for fire evacuations, which has also been uploaded to the IPsession server and can be sent if needed.

In addition to the mobiles, the high school principal, vice principals and school secretary have IP phones on their desks, with the ability to send out an “all call page”, which sends an announcement to every IP phone and PA speaker on campus.

Next Steps/Higher Expectations

East Central ISD is very happy with IPcelerate’s solution to the high school’s bell schedule challenge. They are next going to deploy the 911 Alert Notification solution, which will allow them to identify the location of a 911 call when placed from an IP phone. The school district is also evaluating the option of transitioning the high school to VoIP as part of the renovation, and moving the IP phones from the mobile into the new school.