Should Gilroy Schools Spend $1 Million to Go Wireless?

The Gilroy Unified School District has its eyes on setting up a wireless Internet network in all 16 schools, but it won't happen on the cheap. 

The school board is set to meet Thursday evening, where the potential wireless access will be discussed.

Currently, there is wireless Internet in the CHS library, in the CTE classrooms at Gilroy High School, at the district office, in the new library at Rod Kelley Elementary School and in the multipurpose rooms at South Valley Middle School, Solorsano Middle School and El Roble Elementary School. 

Establishing a consistent wireless across the district is not as simple as installing routers in every classroom. To make it a coherent, unified network, the district needs to establish a local area network, known as a LAN, to connect every computer across the district. 

Based on the assumption that each classroom could have up to 40 wireless users at any given time, the district's IT department has estimated that establishing a LAN would cost anywhere from $800,000 to $1 million. 

Vendors have quoted the district at anywhere from $85,000 to $118,000 just to establish wireless Internet across the Christopher High School campus.

The district's current network can support 4,000 users, and its bandwidth is being fully utilized, school board documents show.

Do you think the district should have full wireless access? Is it worth $1 million? Tell us in the comments!