Henrico School Board approves new HS laptop, MS network contracts

High school students and staff members will carry lighter, more powerful laptops with them when school begins in the fall, thanks to a new four-year lease agreement approved Thursday by the Henrico School Board.

The $20.1-million contract with Virginia Beach-based Electronic Systems, Inc. will provide the Dell 5420 Latitude Laptop to all high school students and employees. Each one weighs just less than three pounds (lighter than the current laptops) and has 16 GB of RAM (about twice what the current machines do), Henrico Schools Technology Director Brian Maddox told the board.

Each also has the i5 10th generation processor, the latest one available. The school system will receive the computers in June, configure them during the following two months and then begin distributing them to staff in early August and students in mid-August.

HCPS will make four annual payments of just more than $5 million as part of the agreement.

In a separate contract with DISYS, Inc., the board authorized $4.8 million for the refresh of its middle school computer network. The contract will fund Cisco networking hardware replacement and installation and configuration services for Henrico’s 12 middle schools and 14 other school facilities.

It will include one access point in every classroom (essentially doubling the current networks) and will result in significant improvements in connectivity, performance and security, and available bandwidth Maddox said. Installation and configuration will take place between May and early August.

The school system is making a lump-sum payment for the six-year deal, Maddox said, which will mean that the deal is about $300,000 less than its current one.