In addition to saving money, the system frees teachers from daily administrative hassles so they can focus on teaching, he said. Before the Kronos system, roving health care employees such as social workers, psychologists and vision testers, who work in several schools each week, had no accurate way to track their hours, Edwards said. Now, with the ID badge system, school clinicians can support Medicare claims with accurate time and attendance data. The next step is a move to a wireless WAN, Edward said. Wireless lets you go beyond that.
Pony express Cincinnati public schools also face a legacy of aging facilities.
Like many organizations, the schools are grappling with the year 2000 problem. But in Cincinnati, it's not about date code, it's about old buildings. Like the Chicago schools, Cincinnati officials want to keep as much electronic equipment out of the walls as they can, he said. More than a year ago, the school system upgraded from an Integrated Services Digital Network to a 155-Mbps asynchronous transfer mode network, providing faster Internet access to 48,000 students and 6,000 school employees. The schools use 200-MHz Compaq ProLiant 2500 dual processor file servers with 256M of RAM and 10G hard drives, he said.