The Examiner U-46 News Feed

IGA, expenditure items approved by District U-46

By Seth Hancock
  The Board of Education in School District U-46 voted 6-0, board member Veronica Noland was absent, to approve an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) with the City of Elgin as well as $3.9 million in expenditure proposals under the consent agenda at its Monday, Jan. 22 meeting.
  The IGA is a renewal for the 2024-2025 school year of an agreement with Elgin’s police department to allow it access to district cameras.
  “U-46 completed the district wide installation of video surveillance cameras and servers,” wrote Richard Bosh, coordinator of school safety, in a memo. “The cameras include a federated system of servers that allow video to be viewed by the Building Access Security Control Office (BASCO) at Plant Operations and School Safety. BASCO and School Safety control all video recording. In 2016, the City of Elgin Police Department and U-46 completed an Intergovernmental Agreement to allow the police department to view in real time capability of U-46 cameras during emergency or police responses.”
  On the expenditure items, the largest was $3.8 million (operations and maintenance/health life safety funds) with Trane Commercial HVAC for an HVAC project at Bartlett’s Prairieview Elementary School.
  “The heat pump system at Prairieview Elementary School was installed in 1991, exceeding its useful life expectancy of 20 years and requires replacement,” the proposal states. “Due to the age of the equipment and difficulty sourcing parts, it has proven to be unreliable, resulting in intermittent issues and frequent service calls, as well as not being energy efficient.”
  The other items were education fund items including a $50,000 bid with August Schools for an electronic health records system.
  “The current student system (Infinite Campus) is no longer able to support the needs of our district in the areas of HIPAA and FERPA, language systems, data interpretation, immunization accuracy, and other areas,” the proposal states. “An Electronic Health Record (EHR) system is needed to maintain compliance, improve accuracy, and protect confidentiality.”
  Additionally, the district will spend $41,250 with Master Medical Equipment to purchase 33 automated external defibrillators (AED) to provide an AED for “each floor of multi-level school buildings or an additional unit in single-story buildings where the gym, health office, and commons areas may not be near each other,” the proposal stated.
  The board also voted 6-0 to approve itemized bills totaling $21.3 million.