In reviewing contracts and quotes Tuesday, the Warsaw School Board learned how new software will help the school district not only take over its own internet filtering but also watch out for the safety of its students.

Chief Financial Officer April Fitterling presented two technology-driven contracts to the board. One was a five-year contract with Trebron Co. Inc. for $200,003.70 for Security Anywhere filtering software, and the other was a two-year contract with Data Strategy for $14,283.31 for VMWare security renewal. The board will be asked to approve the contracts at its meeting Monday.

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Warsaw Schools Chief Technology Officer Brad Hagg explained Data Strategy is the company WCS does its VMWare renewal through. VMWare is the software that “basically creates all of our virtual servers,” he said. Hagg said they used to buy a box for every single server they had, “and now everything is virtualized.” He said WCS couldn’t do business without it, and it saves the school district money by not having all of that physical structure.

Hagg said they’re still working on the Trebron contract. Their filtering software would replace the internet filtering and Gaggle services WCS has been using.

“This will be the software that protects all the kids and keeps them off inappropriate websites,” he said. “The great thing is ... it completely operates in the cloud on the internet and filters kids wherever they take their devices.”

He said it also has a parent component, so parents could log in to a portal and see what their kids have been doing on the internet – from Google searches and YouTube videos to any website they visit.

Parents also could set their own protections for when their kids are at home.

Since the service would provide the same security features as Gaggle, “We’d get notifications any time students are threatening to hurt themselves or others. We would be able to act on those things,” he said.

A human monitoring service would get rid of everything that isn’t a valid concern “before it even comes to us, which is really nice,” Hagg said.

WCS’s current filtering agreement doesn’t come due until July, so Trebron is allowing WCS to use its software for free until then. If WCS decides before then that it doesn’t want the product, it can back out of the contract.

The five-year contract WCS negotiated will save $23,000 a year by combining two products, Hagg said.

All 7,000 student accounts and 1,000 staff accounts would be filtered and monitored, with separate rules  for staff and students.

Hagg said their tests have shown that Security Anywhere has been finding more than Gaggle did. He said they want to do more testing to make sure there’s no way to bypass the security features.

Board member Mike Coon asked what the protocol was if they found a site that people shouldn’t be on.

With Gaggle, Hagg said, the serious concerns are reported to him, Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert and Chief Academic Officer Dr. David Robertson. Whoever sees it first usually deals with it or reaches out to the school principal to let them know there’s a situation.

If it’s a weekend or a holiday and it’s a an urgent situation, the police will be contacted to do a wellness check on the student. Minor things are often forwarded to principals, Hagg said.

“There probably isn’t a weekend where we don’t send a police officer out to someone’s house, Hoffert said. “I can’t remember the last weekend where we haven’t had text messaging going back and forth. ... I’ve got three people on the account is, so that way one of us is always able to check it because the worst fear we have is that some self-harm is going on or harm to others is going on.”

Hoffert said his biggest worry was that a parent would get mad if a police officer showed up at their door. “We have not had one parent that’s called here upset. Instead, most of the time, we hear from the parents who say ‘thank you, we didn’t know what was going on with our kids,’” he said.

There is a followup with students by guidance counselors and crisis intervention teams. The school district has partnerships with mental health agencies, Bowen Center in particular.

In other business, the school board:

• Recognized Teachers Credit Union for its support of the Legos Robotics program at Washington STEM Academy. TCU was represented at the board by Karen Mayer and Sandy Seacott.

Principal Tom Ray said, “They’ve been there since the beginning, and it’s not only just financial aid, but it’s also people’s talent and time. They allow their employees to come over to Washington during learning showcasing. So it’s during the day and after school, evenings. So it provides an authentic audience for our kids. That’s huge and important as well.”

• Held the first reading for new and/or updated school board policies.

• Heard the community build for the Eisenhower Elementary playground is scheduled for May 17-18. Harrison Elementary’s has not been scheduled.