Belmont Public Schools Technology Department

Department of Instructional Technology

Mission

The mission of the Belmont Public Schools is to educate children, preparing them to learn from the past, imagine the future, and meet the challenges of the present. We believe that educational excellence flourishes in an atmosphere of cooperation, safety,and mutual respect, and results from dedicated partnerships between schools and the community.

Vision

Our vision is that students and staff will have ubiquitous access to the tools of technology and the skills to effectively use them for the process of education. We also envision that the school administration will leverage technology to enable the most efficient and effective means of managing the business of schooling.

Technology Leadership

Leadership and planning for technology within the Belmont Public Schools will primarily come from three sources—the School Committee, School Administration, and the District Technology Leaders which contains members from each school. The building principals and curriculum directors shall also play a vital role in providing leadership and direction for subject and grade level technology utilization and planning.

The implementation of technology plans and projects is the responsibility of the school administration (Director of Technology). The school administration (Director of Technology) should conduct ongoing technology audits as part of the technology planning process.

Funding Structure

The Belmont Public Schools recognize that technology is an ongoing budget item and has placed appropriate accounts into the budget. These include the following:

Personnel (administrative, technical, and instructional)
Staff development
Hardware
Software
Infrastructure (including contractual services)
Consumable technology supplies

It is also recognized within the Town government that there will be an ongoing request or capital funds as aging and broken school technology equipment needs to be replaced.

Infrastructure

The school department will assume the leadership role for the management of the Town Municipal Area Network (MAN). This will include the creation of standards (physical layer, protocol layer (IP address schemes)), and will manage the switching, routing, V-LAN configurations and firewall for the MAN. As new network services are proposed, (e.g. telephone, security monitoring), planning will be done in coordination and cooperation with the Town and all appropriate departments.

Network electronics throughout the infrastructure of the Town and schools will need periodic upgrade and expansion. Infrastructure improvements will be identified and included in technology budget planning, and capital requests.