School board renews career planning tool
Apr. 19—Glynn County Schools will continue using a college and career planning program called Naviance next school year after seeing success with the new platform this year.
The Glynn County Board of Education approved the purchase of the Naviance platform for the second consecutive year at its meeting on Tuesday. The program will cost $48,230.
"That is the platform that we purchased last year to replace Georgia College 411, which is what we use for our BRIDGE bill requirement for our students in grades 6-12," said Senetra Haywood, director of students services for the school district, during a board work session April 7. "We've had great success with it this year, and we'd like to continue with it for next year."
The BRIDGE Act in Georgia requires all students in middle and high school to receive counseling and regularly-scheduled advisement and for them to graduate high school prepared to go to college or to enter the workforce.
In other business, the board approved two e-rate funding opportunities. E-rate funding offers federal money for school and library technology needs.
The school district plans to purchase a new firewall to handle district internet traffic and a new broadband option to provide direct circuits from Brunswick High to the two elementary schools on St. Simons — Oglethorpe Point Elementary and St. Simons Elementary.
"For our two island schools, we've been using AT&T land circuits, wide area networks to support our island schools," said Bob Schwartz, director of technology services for Glynn County Schools. "We own about 43 miles of fiber optic cable to serve all of our mainland schools at 10 gigs per second. We've been leasing that service from AT&T, and this year I'd like to go with ATC Broadband."
The district will pay $7,535 for the firewall and $22,800 over five years for the island school land service.
