At the August meeting, the Indian Lake Board of Education recognized members of the Varsity Softball team. The team won Sectional and District titles in the spring and finished as runners-up in the OHSAA Regional tournament. Softball Head Coach Skip Oliver also presented Sammi Miller with her All-American award. As a junior, Miller was one of only two Ohio players and 16 in the nation, selected to the All-American Softball team.
Also, at the meeting the Indian Lake Board of Education approved an agreement during their regular board meeting Monday, August 15th, that will net the district $96,000 annually.
The Board voted to accept a lease agreement with Clearwire/Sprint Educational Broadband Service in which the communications company will pay to use the district’s excess wireless capacity.
Superintendent Pat O’Donnell explains, “For a number of years, Indian Lake has held two licenses from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) permitting the exclusive use of certain radio frequency channels in a local service area. These licenses were made available some years ago by the FCC for instructional television to permit schools to transmit television programs to communities and school buildings.”
Today, the FCC allows Educational Broadband Service (EBS) licenses to be used not only for educational television, but also for wireless internet transmissions. School districts are permitted by law to lease excess capacity of their EBS channels for community purposes, while retaining educational use for a portion of the channels.
The current lease with Watch TV on Indian Lake’s excess capacity ends on October 15th, 2016. Until recently, this agreement paid the district $4,000 per year.
In March, Indian Lake Local Schools, along with five other area school districts, issued a Joint Request for Proposals in an effort to obtain the best deal for the school districts involved. Clearwire’s proposal provided the best opportunity for the district to lease the excess capacity and to provide a revenue stream to the district for the next thirty years. In addition to receiving an up front payment and on-going monthly payments, the district will be provided with service credits, allowing it to use the retained portion of the channels for district use including for such thing as security, educational internet access, cell phone access and other uses to benefit the district and students.