Page 45 - School Planning & Management, November 2017

CASE HISTORIES { REAL-WORLD SOLUTIONS }
Breaking the Cycle of Norovirus Transmission
HOW DO YOU FIGHT A triple threat of flu, strep, and noro- virus that quadruples student
absence rates? With a team of custodians empowered with the resources and train- ing needed to quickly and safely enact protocols to protect learning spaces.
Hamilton County Department of Education is home to 79 schools and over 40,000 students. When monitoring trig- gered attention to dramatically increasing absences across the district, custodians stepped up to the next level of our disinfec- tion process. Once ten schools showed 60 or more students out per day, a district-wide campaign was initiated to break the cycle of transmission.
Multiple disinfection methods were di- aled up. Every surface in every school was
fogged with an electrostatic disinfectant. Each restroom was pressure washed with disinfecting foam every night. Thorough and repeated attention to surfaces through- out each school shut down infection vec- tors, but that was only half the story.
Routine hygiene is also key to control- ling outbreaks by shutting down person- to-person transmission, so ABM supplied extra hand sanitizers and paper towels to help school nurses and district leaders sup- port regular hand washing.
After one of the hardest hit elementary schools saw 100 students absent over just five days, our custodian’s campaign to control the virus outbreak brought that school’s absence rate down to 15 after just one week. District-wide, one week after our custodian’s first initiative, the student
The flu, strep and norovirus are all serious illnesses that can quadruple student absence rates. Routine hygiene and disinfection can help to mitigate the threat that these illnesses pose. ABM helps to promote better hygiene standards and cleaner schools to cut down on absences and create a safer learning environment.
absence rate for Hamilton County Schools had returned to pre-outbreak levels.
info.abm.com/School-Planning- Norovirus-LP.html
Portland Public Schools Strikes the Right Image
WHILE PORTLAND PUBLIC Schools enjoys a positive image in the community, the district was once challenged when it came to its computer images.
Ryan Whitman-Morales, director of technical operations for PPS, says it used to take up to four IT pros a few days to image new PCs using a cumbersome and labor- intensive process. The staff created the im- ages by hand and sent them to CDW via FTP server or by mailing DVDs. CDW techni- cians manually uploaded the images to new PCs before sending them back to PPS.
That changed a few years ago when PPS set up a site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) tunnel from its headquar- ters to CDW. Now PPS staff create images in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) software, which trans- mits them to an SCCM server at CDW’s
secondary configuration and distribution center in North Las Vegas, Nevada. CDW technicians load the images onto new PCs within minutes, apply the customer’s asset tag and then box and ship the hardware di- rectly to the right PPS school where CDW’s third-party service provider unpacks and sets up the PCs. All the teachers need to do is set aside space for the new computers.
To get started the district upgraded from its old network to Microsoft Active Directory and then SCCM. Next, PPS upgraded the bandwidth to accommodate the additional technologies, explains Jonathan Vail, user experience management lead for PPS, who worked with CDW to configure the VPN tunnel using Cisco ASA appliances.
“This new setup saves the district hun- dreds of thousands of dollars a year in labor and shipping costs and storage space. We no longer have to store computers on pallet
Portland Public Schools saved money on shipping and labor and conserved storage space by utilizing a VPN and working with CDW. It also allows the IT Team to spend more time working to solve problems with teachers and students.
after pallet,” says Whitman-Morales. “Plus, it lets our IT team spend more time out in the field working with teachers and students wheretheycanbemostuseful.” SPM
www.cdwg.com
NOVEMBER 2017 / SCHOOL PLANNING & MANAGEMENT 45