Schools

Salisbury Schools To Get New Phone System

Service Electric will replace old copper wires with fiber optics by April 21.

The old copper wires in Salisbury Township School District's are expected to be completely replaced with new fiber optics by April 21, according to William Brackett, the district's director of buildings and grounds.

"That should solve 80 percent of the problems," Brackett told the school board at its Monday operations committee meeting.

In addition, Service Electric is  replacing as the district's service provider.

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On Wednesday, the board will vote on one of four proposals, ranging from $105,000 to $250,000,  that will replace the district's phone system with a voice over Internet system, new phones and hardware.

The phones in the district's four schools and administration building frequently shut down.'s phone system was knocked out for a day last month because of a failure in a small piece of equipment located in the administration building, Brackett said.  "It's getting harder to find parts," said Brackett, who managed to fix the faulty equipment with a piece from East Penn School District, which just replaced its phone system, he said.

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Salisbury's phone system often shuts down because the equipment cannot search for open lines.

"If we had a new system it wouldn't have happened because redundancies would be built in," he said.


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