Telephone System

Washington County Schools has completed the implementation of Cisco's AVVID telephone system across the entire county. Most of our schools had Centrex telephone service which is costly to maintain. We have replaced approximately 420 telephones across the county. The new phones are the Cisco 7900 series.

All phones will have access to voice mail, caller-ID, conferencing, and other advanced calling features. The Cisco 7900-series phones also have the ability to run XML-based web applications. We currently have News and Local Weather XML applications available on the phones.

Sprint (now Embarq) was chosen as the vendor to implement the new phone system. Our technology staff is working closely with them during implementation to ensure that we can support the system in the future. We have estimated the cost savings to be approximately $80,000 per year since completion.

This system has enabled us to upgrade our Distance Learning technology through the use of Tandberg teleconferencing equipment.