Network Will Step Up Speed Of Knowledge $10 Million Project Is Wiring Schools For New Possibilities

Spokane’s public schools and area colleges are getting wired to gether for the first time, and they’re not messing around.

The project will signify a revolution from the world of paper, pencil and postage into instant computer communications between schools.

It will be the first school project in the nation to enable floods of voice, video and data to pass at unprecedented speed, besides offering Internet access at the blink of an eye.

The project is called EMAN, short for Educational Metropolitan Area Network. It will cost more than $10 million to link Spokane District 81 schools, the Community Colleges of Spokane, Gonzaga, Whitworth, Washington State University and Eastern Washington University.

Wiring already has begun, and the network should be completed in two years.

“It’s absolutely unlimited what this will allow us to do,” said Dr. Gary Livingston, superintendent of District 81.

Those possibilities may mean:

An Advanced Placement calculus student could take a special class via live videoconference rather than busing across town.

High school students could have a real-time conference with a school counselor and a college admissions officer, and send a transcript with the click of a mouse.

A popular documentary for elementary classes about the Amazon rain forest, for instance, would never be checked out of the library because any number of classes could view it simultaneously on video downloaded from a server.

The consortium of schools and colleges recently awarded the EMAN contract bid to fiberoptic cable provider WWP Fiber, a subsidiary of Washington Water Power, for $8.5 million. Packet Engines, a Spokane Valley computer networking company, will supply the routing switches to convert the transmissions into computer networks for $1.7 million.

Assurances of local support, and speeds nearly seven times faster than available any other way, clinched the deal, sources said.

All parties agree using the system should be easy.

“Doing videoconferencing and sending massive amounts of voice and data will be as easy as sending an e-mail,” said Bernard Daines, president and CEO of Packet Engines.

The fiberoptic lines, dubbed “dark fiber,” can transmit data at the speed of light. What would take a bundle of copper wire 6 inches thick to do, dark fiber can do through a wire the thickness of a human hair, said WWP Fiber spokesman Steve Yunker.

Packet Engines’ routing switches will be placed in every school along the network. They are capable of speeds of 1,000 megabits per second. Assuming it takes 30 hours to download the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica on a 28.8 kilobit per second modem, it would take about three seconds on a Packet Engines switch.

Some money for the project comes from the $74.5 million District 81 bond levy that 78 percent of voters approved in February. The colleges will pay for their connections out of their own budgets, and other K-12 districts in Spokane County have the option to join in.

Salk Middle School and Shadle Park High School already are wired, and Regal Elementary School is almost done, Livingston said. The installation is noisy and intrusive, so the work must be done when students are not in the buildings on weekends, nights, and days off. Still, all 54 schools in District 81 should be completed by April, Livingston said.

Construction inconveniences should be minimal, as WWP Fiber plans to string the cable on overhead poles wherever they are available, which is at about 90 percent of the sites, said spokesman Steve Yunker.

The excitement surrounding the project for District 81 is a combination of the technology involved and how quickly it will be running, Livingston said.

“Originally we thought this would have a five- to 10-year lifespan, but now we’re thinking 10 to 20 years,” Livingston said. “We’re really getting our money’s worth for the taxpayer.”

What Spokane is about to accomplish has been stalled at the national level.

As part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress directed telecommunications companies to spend $2.25 billion to wire all of America’s schools by 2000.

Companies such as AT&T and MCI have balked, however, saying they will pass the cost burden on to consumers. All money is now on hold until at least this fall, and the Federal Communications Commission has slashed the budget to $1.275 billion to smooth out the disagreement.

Critics also have gained converts in Congress questioning the efficacy of the Internet in teaching.

Priority for funds begins with historically poor districts, according to the mandate championed by Vice President Al Gore. Under the formula, District 81 eventually could be eligible for $6 million more in federal funding, Livingston said.

With federal funds on hold for most districts, other districts will be closely watching the EMAN project.

Daines figures the education sector could be an enormous untapped market for high-speed networking systems, and that other school districts will want to see how well Spokane’s EMAN project works.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Daines said. “There are many school districts throughout the state that would love to have this.”