Opportunity to partner suggested by Francis

By Sue Van Derzee Town Times

The first selectmen of both Durham and Middlefield have been meeting on a monthly basis with District 13 school officials over the last two years in an attempt to better understand each other’s concerns and issues.

In the second such meeting attended by Durham’s newly elected first selectman Laura Francis, she put forward the possibility of a partnership of the towns and the school district on a Voice Over Internet Protocol, or Vo IP (pronounced “ voyp”) communications system.

According to Francis, recent discussions with the town’s Information Technology (IT) vendor, The Computer Company, raised the possibility of bringing this technology to a partnership of towns and school district. “They were very excited and they volunteered to sponsor a workshop with Cisco, a Vo IP provider,” Francis said, adding that Vo IP installations pay for themselves in 12-18 months.

Vo IP can facilitate tasks and provide services that may be more difficult or expensive using more traditional methods, including the ability to transmit more than one telephone call down the same broadbandconnected telephone line. This can make Vo IP a simple way to add an extra telephone line to a home or office.

Three-way calling, call forwarding, automatic redial and caller ID are also included with Vo IP service, features for which traditional companies normally charge extra. Perhaps most interesting of all is location independence, one of the big draws of cell phones. Only an Internet connection is needed to get a connection to a Vo IP provider. For instance, persons using Vo IP phones can work from anywhere with a sufficiently fast and stable Internet connection.

One of the really exciting applications mentioned by Scott Wright, who attended representing emergency services in Durham, was the possibility of “reverse 911, or being able to send voice messages from a central point to everyone.” This is the technology in use at some universities after the Virginia Tech murders last year.

Business manager Ron Melnick and superintendent of schools Susan Viccaro were very interested in the idea and further meetings await.

Other issues discussed during the monthly meeting in­cluded discussion of the formation of a District 13 building committee with eight members, six from the communities and two board of education members. Viccaro also explained that the district is going to a different budget format this year which, it is hoped, will prove easier to read and understand. “The building principals will have their budgets in to me this week,” Viccaro continued, “and I will make my presentation to the board of education on March 5. They will meet each Wednesday in March to work on the budget, and it gets cut each step of the way the principals cut requests from staff, I cut requests from the principals, and the board will cut requests from everyone.”

In that vein, First Selectman Jon Brayshaw of Middlefield asked if money could be saved by not replacing some of the roughly one dozen teachers ex­pected to retire. Both Viccaro and Melnick considered that a long shot since the number of pupils in the district is slated to remain steady.