OSAKIS — The Osakis School Board approved both an internet agreement and a network services agreement with the Eastern Central Minnesota Educational Cable Cooperative.
The approvals were made at the board’s regular meeting, which took place Monday, March 11.
The district currently uses the Central Minnesota Educational Telecom Service, or CMETS, for internet and some network service support, but CMETS is dissolving.
The internet agreement with ECMECC is estimated at $4,502, while the network services agreement is estimated at $8,105.
Marc Johnson, executive director of ECMECC, said some areas of focus that were part of CMETS are also a part of ECMECC. One of these is the Central Minnesota Wide Area Network, an internet services program.
“It’s existed for 20 years,” Johnson said via Skype. “ECMECC has always participated in it, but we haven’t always been the manager of that service. We are now the manager of that service, and it serves over 60 school districts and 46 library sites through a large swathe of central Minnesota.”
Johnson explained, “It fully qualifies any of the districts for state telecommunications equity aid, which you received because you were part of CMETS before. The only way to get that aid is to be part of a cooperative, and so this one does fully qualify you for that aid.”
ECMECC provides all of its sites with a full gigabyte of bandwidth, but districts are only billed for average usage.
“We looked at the history of the district for the past year and said, ‘On average, the district used this much bandwidth,'” Johnson said. “Even though you have a (gigabyte) available to you and sometimes you would use that much, most of the time you are using less.”
The state acts as provider for the service, Johnson said.
“There are no other providers who have come to us with proposals that can provide the level of security that the state network provides,” he said.
All network traffic is monitored, and if there is a problem it can be traced, Johnson said.
There are also specific cybersecurity services that go “above and beyond” what is on the network, Johnson said.
There is a yearly comprehensive risk assessment, internal and external vulnerability scans are performed, and ECMECC works with districts to interpret those scans.
The annual out-of-pocket cost after discounts would be approximately $4,500, Johnson said.
The school board voted to join ECMECC as an associate member.
Johnson explained, “The idea is, we go a year or two under this associate membership kind of status, and that would give you time to look at some of the other things we do with distance learning, with instructional technology, and with our college and career options programs.”
On approval, the correspondence is sent to the ECMECC board, which would then approve it, and membership could begin as early as July 1.
Superintendent Justin Dahlheimer said CMETS costs $51,000, and that ECMECC is “substantially” less.
According to its website, ECMECC includes 39,000 students, 2,800 faculty/administrators and 2,200 educational support staff from 14 member school districts and Pine Technical and Community College.
Travis Gulbrandson covers several beats, including Osakis School Board and Osakis City Council, along with the Brandon-Evansville School Board. His focus will also be on crime and court news.