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Career Technical Education Director Terry Norton presented his monthly technology report to the Marengo County Board of Education at its Dec. 14 meeting.

Beginning the week of Jan. 8, the Marengo County School system plans to give a full ACAP (Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program) practice test to prepare students for the upcoming testing period. The state is providing an ACAP Summative Practice test, and districts were able to begin setting up the test portal on Dec. 6.

Under the technology update, Norton reported that work on the Access Control lock system had begun. Equipment and cables have been run at Marengo High School, and the same will be done at Sweet Water High School this week. A.L. Johnson is scheduled for the week of Jan. 8.

“We still have to get the software set up on the server, get accounts created, and get the cards ready. KAM Technologies, ClearWinds, and Lodestar are working together to take care of service access and remote access,” said Norton.

School buses with reported camera issues have been assessed, and all cameras have been repaired. Norton said the tech team recently had a two-day session with SEON, the system currently used to run the buses. A representative from Lodestar, Aidan Busby, traveled with the technician to troubleshoot and fix the camera problems.

“Our current system has four channel DVRs, and they can handle up to four cameras. It also requires one of the transportation staff to travel to the school, pull and take the hard drive back to the bus shop, and use a special reader to access saved video,” said Norton.

Norton said that future plans for the bus camera systems include upgrading the system to a six channel system. Under this new system, there would be three wide angle cameras monitoring the driver area, loading area, and passenger area, one windshield camera facing the road, and two stop arm cameras that will capture video of any vehicle that violates the Stop Arm Laws.