The Turlock Unified School District Board of Trustees approved $180,624 for technology network upgrades at Osborn Two-Way Immersion Academy, the district’s largest elementary school, and Turlock Junior High School.

According to TUSD Director of Technology and Data Systems Jason Brem, Osborn and TJHS have been “in dire need” of upgrades in the past few years.

Osborn has been difficult to manage with persistent network problems, latency and dropped connections.

With more than 1,200 students TJHS has the largest student body, outside of the comprehensive high schools, and this year all students on campus will participate in the online SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) state testing as part of the Common Core implementation in the spring.

“The upgrade project will give us a good idea of how future work will be done at our high schools as far as scope of work and the how long the work will take,” explained Brem.

TUSD will be joining the Merced County contract to save cost on the project for lower rates on technology services.

Part of the work will include training for network managers and support staff via the job contractor, AMS.NET.