Greenville County Schools located in beautiful upstate South Carolina, is a vibrant community of 101 schools and centers where student achievement abounds.

Greenville County School District (GCSD) is the largest school district in the state of South Carolina and the 44th largest in the US. GCSD serves over 76,000 students and employs 9,800 people spread across 84 schools and 17 specialty and early education centers on 3,000 acres covering over 800 square miles.

Inspiring teachers ignite learning and a wide variety of academic offerings are available to meet individual needs. Greenville County Schools is the state leader in school choice, with more than 15 percent of the student population attending a school other than their assigned school through the Magnet Academy and Change in Assignment School Choice programs.

Challenges

The sheer size of Greenville County School District (GCSD) due to the number of schools and staff members, prompted a discussion to standardize on communication technology.

The district technology team wants to ensure auser-friendly intercom and bell system across the district for all schools and minimize the number of parts and technical training required for installation and service.

At GCSD it is not uncommon for staff members to move to different schools within the district and safety is impacted when vital communication technology varies from school to school. Standardizing on Telecor across the entire Greenville County School District is a cost effective solution since Telecor is already present in numerous locations.

GCSD’s standardization on Telecor helps us quickly train district personnel eliminating the need to retrain if they move to a different school in the district. Managing the Telecor equipment and parts is efficient and seamless since it is used in every school.
– Dennis Whitehead, Technology Crew Chief for Greenville County School District

Solution

For the past 5 years, GCSC has been working toward the standardization goal with Telecor solutions and at the beginning of the current school year, the last location was completed.

Now the district has a cross-training advantage due to singular technology and an economic advantage because only one brand has to be stocked for parts and installation personnel only need to be technically trained on one intercom and clock system.

GCSD also found it beneficial to use integration cards for the Telecor systems to interface directly with their IP phone system. This integration means that a phone can be picked up anywhere in a building and interface directly with Telecor’s communication technology.

Results

When user training is needed, it takes the GCSD technology team only about 5 minutes to conduct training. Personnel can move throughout the district and know exactly what to do at any school.

Telecor stands the test of time and makes it easy for our technology team of 5 to maintain over 100 locations easily and efficiently.

The district technology team is able to effectively manage the entire district’s intercom and bell systems seamlessly since having a uniform technology approach has resulted in system expertise.

For new construction projects, the GCSD technology team uses LEI Systems, a division of Lefler Electronics, Inc., headquartered in Concord, North Carolina with a local office in Greenville, South Carolina.

LEI Systems reviews the architectural plans and provides installation, programming and training at these new sites. As a Telecor expert resource, the local LEI Systems team works to ensure they support the efforts of the district technology staff and provide stocking and technical support assistance for the Telecor system.

Lefler Electronics, Inc. is a Communications, Sound, Fire, Security and Video Contractor/Consultant with over 2,000 projects completed since their beginning in 1985. LEI Systems assists with numerous residential and commercial design and implementation projects across their service area.

For over 45 years Telecor has established itself internationally as a provider and leader of quality intercom, paging, clock, mass notification and security communication products and systems. With thousands of systems installed across the United States and worldwide, Telecor offers complete process manufacturing – from the concept and design stages, through to a worldwide network of certified trained distributors in the Education, Healthcare, Security and Commercial markets.