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Konawa VOIP Phone System


Posted Date: 09/07/2017

Konawa VOIP Phone System

As of September 6th, the new phone system at Konawa Public School is fully operational. We would like to thank everyone for their patience during the installation. The new system includes handsets in every classroom. The purpose of the system is to provide safety and communications throughout the district by replacing the Nortel phone system, the public address system, and the bell system. Our last phone system was installed in the mid 1990’s and was beyond the product’s end of life. All hope for stretching its service any further was dashed a few weeks ago by a lightning strike. After that event, the AT&T technicians pronounced the system dead. Fortunately, we had already begun the process of replacing it with a VOIP telephone system.

Voice Over Internet Protocol telephones use the school’s network and Internet service to communicate. We had, of course, known that VOIP phones were the preferred systems for many years now but had been delaying updating our phone system due to the lack of funds, the amount of work involved, and the general inconvenience of having to install and learn a new system. However, we no longer had much choice. Last spring we began the replacement process by meeting with a number of vendors and learning about available products and services. After discussing the options with other school districts, we elected to go with Shortel telephones and to include our public address and bell systems in the project.

The PA and bell systems in our school district were installed when the buildings were built. Some repairs and replacements were made over the years, but both of these systems had become increasingly problematic in recent years. In fact, a recent power outage disabled the PA system in the elementary school. On the bright side, all of the existing analog speakers in the halls and classrooms have been connected to the new system and additional speakers have been installed at three outdoor locations and in the high school gymnasium. Many of the original speakers that were not working before have been reconnected and are working properly now. The paging is one-way to the speaker systems, but by providing a handset for every classroom, we are better able to make a call for assistance than ever before.

We believe that this new phone system will serve Konawa Public School many years into the future with greater versatility than the old systems. At some point in the future, the district could include security alarms and cameras in this system. As in the past, the main number for the school is 580.925.3244 which will be answered by the auto attendant. All of the original extensions are still valid as listed below:

222 — Superintendent 239 — Elementary School
223 — Administration Building 261 — Library
228 — High School 246 — Child Nutrition
236 — Middle School 253 — Transportation