RINET BOD
Meeting, August 3, 2001
Minutes
Attendees: Bill Fiske, Ted Kellogg, Katie Miller, Pam Christman, Mike Shaughnessy, Jim Halley, Sharon Hussey, Jim Monti, George Loftus
Board members would like to receive minutes immediately after the Board meetings. RINET staff will send the minutes to the RINET Board list within a few days of
each Board meeting.
Review and approval of minutes from July 6th meeting. Approved with minor changes.
Project Status reports:
Filtering: After extensive negotiating with several vendors and extensive comparison of both X-Stop and N2H2, RINET staff has selected X-Stop as the solution of choice. The license and subscription fee covering three years will be paid through a grant from RIDE from the content fund. Filtering policy decision-making will be made and implemented at the local level. There will be a period of time during which policy fine-tuning must take place. RINET staff and district and school staff are responsible for maintaining local policies and will work together to create the most flexible system possible. Members approved a motion to acquire and implement X-Stop. Need a press release asap and send press packet to all superintendents. A number of districts also doing this and helping the remainder. Host a q & a session in late August. Joe P. to capture video of q & a.
Discussion related to issues of content filtering included these points; sometimes valuable sites are blocked, legislation is too restrictive and inflexible, critical that there is local control of policy , RINET staff needs to carefully stay away from philosophical discussions … refer to legislators, RIDE, etc.
Informational letters regarding CIPA and RINET filtering were sent to all public school superintendents. Letters were also sent to all Catholic and private schools in RI. RINET is gaining some new customers due to filtering offering.
Post meeting note: After the meeting there was some discussion of the fact that only schools that have direct access lines will be able to take advantage of the filtering solution. Schools connecting via modem still connect to the general modem pool.
Core Rebuild: Staff involved in the rebuild are now available to begin implementation (Manager of Network Operations and Services now on-board and volunteer staff have returned from vacations). Waiting for a piece of equipment to begin implementation.
Modem problems: We now have an idea of what the problems are. Joe Caparco will work on this. Need more communication to users. Need to add functionality to the SORICO/RINET phone system that is more informative and feature-laden.
Video project: Carts shipped, TVs shipped, and training offered for fall. ISDN connections? Contracting with Qwest to provide LD carrier. Joe Caparco will pick up this project. We should begin to pursue video opportunities with Roger Williams Park Zoo.
Continue to move our customer base to ATM, but still looking at other methods to carry advanced Internet apps (esp. video) over our current Frame Relay lines. Will ATM remain as the priority for migration from frame relay? Other technological solutions are quickly emerging.
Personnel:
Introduction to Joe Caparco, Manager of Network Operations and Services ? Sharon gave a review of Joe’s vitae.
Upgrade to Business Manager position ? Melanie’s current position is a Financial and Account Analyst. Sharon recommends a promotion and a salary increase.
New job description approved. Supervisor of Business Operations title approved. Salary increase approved. Specifics will be decided by the Executive Committee.
New Business:
Motion on Life insurance benefit tabled: No need to address.
Budget 2002 presentation:
Budget reviewed. Ted suggests that a portion of annual income should be set aside as reserve and would require Board approval to move into an expendable category. Need to ask auditors about process. Preliminary budget approved.
Unfinished Business:
Review and approval of OSHEAN rates: George Loftus formally recused himself from the discussion. The increase in OSHEAN fees is over the $10,000 level at which the Executive Director is able to spend without Board approval.
Increase in cost is $3148/month which includes I2 access (additional mbps) and NOC coverage. We will begin this school year at 25mbps service with the ability to bleed into the I2 regional capacity. All traffic to other OSHEAN members will travel over I2 pipes. Concern regarding beginning year at 25mbps may be moot because of the I2 access and increasing pipe size can be addressed quickly through OSHEAN, if necessary.
Increase approved.
Agenda Items for Next Meeting:
Katie announced that Barrington school district, as some other districts which run their own mail servers, will not issue RINET accounts for new teachers. This will be a long-term issue because some teachers will not have RINET dial-up access in this scenario.
Question was posed concerning RINET authentication of locally assigned and managed email accounts in the manner of the Chariho case. Further investigation is necessary.
Motion to adjourn approved at 12:00 noon.