Highline Public Schools

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Qwest has provided many years of dependable, quality service to the Highline School District. Now, by enabling Highline to consolidate on multiple Qwest services, including GeoMax and QMOE, Qwest provides us the best solution for high bandwidth, a sustainable and expandable solution at the least cost.
Mark Finstrom, Director of Technology Services

Challenge

At Highline Public Schools in Washington State, feature-rich media applications are increasingly important for teachers to enhance their own education and for classroom instruction. The existing T-1 lines could not support an expanding array of high-bandwidth tools. A new data warehouse and plans for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) made the need for increased bandwidth even more urgent.

Solution

Highline chose Qwest GeoMax high-speed, high-capacity fiber optic data transport service for the majority of its more than 30 facilities. Highline also selected Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet Service (QMOE ) for three of its schools and also implemented VoIP with Qwest providing Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unity technology. Qwest is a one-stop shop for additional services including Qwest DSL, Qwest ISDN, Qwest Direct Inward Dialing (DID), and primary rate interface (PRI) lines.

Benefits and Results:

Enhanced quality of instruction with reliable access to rich Internet applications and instructional media
High-capacity GeoMax service enables costsaving server consolidation
High-bandwidth capabilities enable the IT team to do backups locally, which is faster and more efficient than manually swapping tapes at each site
Reliable Qwest support and technology provide dependable uptime
Centralization allowed strategic staff reassignment so that higher-qualified technicians support the system, further improving uptime
When complete, the Qwest-installed Cisco VoIP solution will provide four-digit dialing and enable E911 compliance

Client

The Highline Public School District serves approximately 17,500 students in the communities of Burien, Des Moines, Normandy Park, SeaTac, Boulevard Park and White Center in the state of Washington. There are 38 Highline campuses, including multiple elementary, middle, and high schools in addition to operational locations. Teachers and administrative staff use an expanding array of feature-rich media and online information.