Upgrades continue at our school building which will make a positive impact on both our church and school ministries.

More than a dozen workers have continued the efforts begun this last fall with the goal of completing work by the end of this school year. 

You may have noticed numerous cables running the length of the school hallway, cables that were formerly gathered neatly together in a bunch and against the wall. Phone wires, network cables, and fire alarm wires followed the walls and then up and down around other openings. The problem is that it left no room for additional upgrades.

Keyless Entry

The project was prompted mostly by the desire to make keyless entry a reality; first for the exterior entrances and, next year, for interior rooms … especially classrooms. 

TechCentric Solutions has been contracted to install a new keyless entry and monitoring system for exterior doors. Their work is scheduled for the first weeks of June, right after school has been dismissed for the current term.

The work is being funded in large part by a Secured School Safety Grant made possible through the Indiana Department of Homeland Security. The grant reimburses St. John’s Lutheran School for up to two-thirds of the cost but must be completed by August 31 of this year, so our focus of attention is on the dozen or so points of entry for our school building.

TechCentric and their subcontractor are working on a bid to extend this system to interior spaces as well so that we can make an application for another grant for the 2024 Fiscal Year.

Computer Network Upgrades

A “value-added” project is helping to extend recent improvements to our campus wifi network. Since cable must be relocated for the keyless entry project, we are completing a restructuring of the entire computer network to better integrate these recent improvements.

The network “hub” which was previously located on the far south end of the building in the school library (next to the old computer “lab”) is being relocated to a more centralized location,  the corner of the teacher workroom. The move will improve network reliability and set us up for moving to the new fiber-optic network now available to us.

Qubit Networks will be on campus during spring break to complete the work they started last year. 

VOIP Phone System

The Board of Trustees has approved a move to a voice-over-internet-protocols (VOIP) phone system and an agreement has been signed with NewAge Telecom to begin this work as soon as May. The need to reconfigure the computer network provides us the opportunity to complete this upgrade since the new phone system will make use of the computer network, which must also be reconfigured to make this all possible.