DRAFT

September 12, 2000
Butte County Office of Education
Board Room
3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

District representatives attending:
Dr. Lee Funk, Chairman, Biggs Unified; Midge Kenyon and Wayne Harry, Paradise Unified; Gina Merino, Golden Feather Union; Gail Shirley, Bruce Crist, and Patrick Wood, Palermo Union; Jim Galloway, Oroville City Elementary; Vikki Gillett, Chico Unified;  Christy Patterson, Durham Unified, Cliff Lantz, Pioneer Union; Rich Garmire, Gridley Unified; Michael Grady, Bangor Union; Gregory Kampf, Thermalito Union; Russ Selken, Dennis Partington, and Marcia Griswold, Butte County Office of Education.

Absent: Representatives for Manzanita School District and Oroville Union High School District. 

Lee Funk called the meeting to order at 3:00 p.m.

E-RATE – Russ Selken is developing a model plan for E-rate Year 4 to present to districts by November. However, not all districts have not received notification on appeals determination. Members had no objection waiting until January for model to be presented to allow for the appeal process. Russ indicated he will also meet with Business Advisory Group, and then the Superintendent's Council, to share the final proposal. Russ asked members if current labor and Internet costs are acceptable, and there were no objections. Russ indicated the Digital California Project may have a positive impact on the model.

DIGITAL CALIFORNIA PROJECT -- Russ Selken provided an update on the technology initiatives which have awarded $32 million to establish a K-12 intranet for California schools. A handout of concept map was used to indicate the network layout with 20 hubs and approximately 200 nodes proposed.  The nine Northern California county offices of education and school district representatives are invited to attend an informational meeting to be held on Sept. 27 in Red Bluff. Please contact Russ or Marcia Griswold for meeting details. This California K-12 intranet is primarily focused on next generation use for curriculum and advanced networking capabilities such as: multicasting, videostreaming, virtual classrooms, state reporting, large scale distributed 3D interactive simulation and remote imaging, analysis and diagnosis. The DCP network will also offer economy of scale and use an encryption for network integrity and security.  

NETWORK UTILIZATION -- Dennis Partington gave members an update on the status of the Butte Education Network which is now comprised of 62 T-1's and 38 ISDN links serving 89 locations. The new server has improved reliability, is much faster and provides more disk space. The use of transparent caching engines saves 10-30% of bandwidth   and also improved network response. More T-1's have replaced slow and unreliable ISDN service to most schools. PacBell Internet is also used to augment web traffic and provide some network fault tolerance. We are rapidly approaching network saturation of our current Internet feeds. CENIC Digital California Project may help pay for this expansion depending on timeframe.  More information will be available in late September.   Members also discussed the ways the bandwidth is being used by districts and filtering products.  The Financial Sub-committee will meet with Russ Selken to consider funding models for ISP expenditures based on actual use of ISP services or base rate plus additional cost if district exceeds allotted amount. This would not be ADA based, but T-1 rate. Russ noted fixed and variable rates may be difficult models, especially with educational budget cycles. He also suggested a questionnaire to determine how staff are using the Internet which might assist in making informed decisions on filtering. This information along with budget models will be useful when discussing local network policies with district superintendents. The BCOE Information Technology Services Department can assist districts on an individual basis to determine levels of filtering and identify specific traffic patterns.

BESS/iPrism Review -- Dennis Partington distributed a handout and reviewed limitations and features of both filtering servers. During the evaluation process, iPrism presented limitations for our network while BESS was more favorable. Russ Selken worked with BESS sales representative to negotiate a discounted price. Various filtering categories for BESS can be found at http://bess-proxy.bcoe.butte.k12.ca.us:2796/s2796/instruct/Filter_Category_Descriptions.htm. Please contact him to try filter categories on your network. Paradise Unified chose to use another filter independently; members agreed other districts who have indicated they want filtering purchased through BCOE ITS will use BESS. 

District WAN Representatives -- Members received forms which are completed annually to confirm their site representatives. Russ asked members to complete and return forms to the ITS Help Desk.

Meeting adjourned at 4:50 p.m.

NEXT BEN CONSORTIUM MEETING –  January 2001, at the Instructional Resource Center, Meeting Room B, date to be announced.

Tentative agenda items: E-rate funding, network monitoring tools, utilization graphs, model funding prospects for network and CENIC update.

Respectfully submitted by,
Marcia Griswold
Senior Secretary
Butte County Office of Education