The Examiner U-46 News Feed

U-46 Board of Education approves varied expenses

By Seth Hancock
  The Board of Education in School District U-46 approved of $14.5 million in expenditure items at its meeting on Monday, Aug. 5.
  The vote was 5-0, board members Samreen Khan and Melissa Owens were absent.
  The largest items were education fund items, including $5.5 million with Vivacity Technologies for purchase of Chromebooks and $1.8 million with CDW-G for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
  The district will purchase 14,500 Chromebooks. Vivacity Technologies was the second lowest bidder among 11 bids.
  “A four-year Chromebook replacement schedule was implemented during the 2023-2024 school year,” the proposal states. “There is also a need to replace all of the Dell Chromebooks that were purchased between 2017 and 2019, as they can no longer be used for various district and state assessments.
  The proposal adds: “The lowest bid was eliminated due to not meeting technical specifications. As such, the second lowest base bid submitted by Vivacity is recommended. Vivacity’s base bid of $379.00 per unit, is an 11.5 [percent] increase over the prior year’s Chromebook price from Vivacity, due to the higher resolution screens and the 10-year end-of-life operating system guarantee for all new Chromebooks.”
  As for the CDW-G proposal, it stated the “VDI solution is necessary to support coursework that requires advanced Windows applications.”
  Other education fund items include two with the College Board for Advanced Placement exams ($650,818) and PSAT and National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test exams ($99,048), $468,512 with various vendors for interactive and commercial displays as well as mobile carts, $457,157 with PowerSchool for data warehouse maintenance and support, $285,874 with various vendors for food service equipment, $186,800 with Mindsight for a firewall contract, $164,103 with Texthelp Inc. for software integration, $106,934 for Scholastic News purchase, $67,500 for post-secondary planning from OneGoal and $61,146 with Riverside Insights for cognative abilities tests.
  Operations and maintenance fund items included $1.1 million with Lakeshore Recycling Systems for waste management and recycling services and $42,498 with Mark Industries for entryway replacement at Canton Middle School.
  A contract renewal costing $153,750 (education and Title III funds) with Data Recognition Corporation is for the LAS Links Spanish test.
  Tort fund items include contract renewals with Illinois Counties Risk Management Trust for liability insurance ($518,048) and Illinois Public Risk Fund for workers’ compensation insurance ($317,778).
  Grant fund items include $1.4 million with 11 vendors for speech therapy services, $570,000 with four vendors for psychological services, $302,468 with Easterseals for coaching support and $238,195 with Northwestern Illinois Association for hearing and vision supervision services.
  Also approved by a 5-0 vote was $10.1 million in itemized bills.