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A local company will provide the networking equipment for the new Bear Creek Community Charter School, the school’s board of trustees decided Thursday.
The board voted to approve two proposals from Lightspeed Technology in Wilkes-Barre for the routers and wireless networking equipment for the new school. The routers and related equipment will cost no more than $59,301 while the proposal for the indoor and outdoor wireless equipment came in at bid of $29,696. School officials said Lightspeed offered the only bid for the equipment, but a review of the cost of the same equipment through the same contract revealed the contract costs would have been higher.
The board also discussed changes to laws that will impact the school. It noted that while the new requirements for employee background checks are a good thing for ensuring the safety of students, the regulations do present a logistical challenge for schools and an additional financial cost to staff and volunteers.
The checks, which used to be a one-time requirement, now must be repeated every three years, and each school where the teacher works must have original paperwork on file, not copies. This means teachers who change schools and substitutes will need to do the checks multiple times, the board was told, and could present an additional challenge to finding substitute teachers as well as impose an additional cost burden on staff. All school staff will need to meet the new requirements by the end of this year. The board approved updated policies to accommodate the law changes and agreed to pay the costs for all existing staff to get their clearances current this year, an estimated $3,000.
In other business, the board learned that 33 students will attend the National History Day regional competition on Saturday, 20 will take part in the regional Science Olympiad and two tied for the top honor in the school’s spelling bee and will advance to the regional competition in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.