I’ve had lots of readers asking me if there are any ties between Idaho state schools Superintendent Tom Luna and the companies bidding on the multimillion-dollar WiFi contract for Idaho high schools, which could run up to 15 years and cost the state up to $35.5 million.

Among the three finalists – Tek-Hut Inc., Education Networks of America, and Ednetics Inc., all of which were brought in for interviews - only ENA has ties to Luna that I could find. The company, based in Nashville, Tenn., donated  $6,000 to Luna’s campaign between the 2009 and 2012, and its top Idaho employee, Garry Lough, worked for Luna at the Idaho State Department of Education before joining ENA in 2012. Lough’s final position with the state was communications director for the Idaho Education Network, the service that’s providing broadband connections to every Idaho high school. Lough, a former Idaho Republican Party executive director, also personally contributed to Luna’s campaigns, but only small amounts, $200 in 2006 and a $115 in-kind donation in 2010.

ENA has an ongoing contract with the state to operate the IEN, to the tune of $8 million a year.The new WiFi contractor would work closely with the IEN to take its broadband feed and translate it into campus-wide WiFi and ethernet connections reaching into all instructional and administrative areas in Idaho high schools.  

Among the other two finalist firms, Tek-Hut Inc. is a Twin Falls-based company founded in 2001 by Dallas Gray and Nate Bondelid; it employs more than 20 people and provides services across the nation, primarily to K-12 school districts. Ednetics is a Post Falls-based company founded by Shawn Swanby in his living room in 1997 when he was a University of Idaho student; it now has 60 employees in three locations and develops and installs networks and other infrastructure in school districts and universities throughout the Northwest.

I could find no record of Tek-Hut Inc. or Ednetics, or the principals of either firm, contributing to any of Luna’s campaigns.