This new school year brings advancements in technology.

According to Matt Brass, new LPOSD Director of Technology, changes are coming to chromebook and bandwidth programs at Sandpoint High School.Brass manages a team of 8 who work to make sure technology runs smoothly throughout the district.

“My job is really to manage the technology, both software and hardware….throughout the district,” Brass said. “[The team’s] job is not only to keep the technology working, but also come up with the best strategies moving forward.”

According to Brass, Sandpoint High School’s wifi networks will not change much.

“[LPOSD and SD networks] were in play in the high school already and…the configuration should be correct on those, so the wifi [network] is pretty much the same,” Brass said.

However, the slow speed that has caused problems in classrooms in the past is looking to improve thanks to changes coming with the school’s bandwidth. The high school and middle school have upgraded from 150 megabits per second to 300 megabits per second in their shared bandwidth plan.

“The way that the network works is every school bounces off Baldy and comes down into the district office and the internet connection for the whole district is at the district office,” Brass said.

The district office has also upgraded from 200 to 300 megabits per second.

“The pipe out of the district office is faster and the pipe from the high school and middle school to the district office is twice as fast,” Brass said.

In addition, seniors will have a new chromebook model called the Dell 11. Their old ones will be passed down to the middle school for classroom use among seventh and eighth graders. Chromebooks from the freshmen, sophomore and junior classes will remain the same.

“We have enough backups to hopefully address the durability issues that came up last year,” Brass said.