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The Idaho State Board of Education has extended its $5 million contract with Plato Software. Currently, 112 of the 114 districts in the state use Plato Instructional Solutions through the I-PLN initiative. The program provides intervention, remediation, and acceleration to align with the state's achievement test; college prep; and support for special education and limited English proficient students. In the last quarter of the 2005-2006 school year, there were 38,858 users on the I-PLN system, with total hours of usage in that quarter reaching 413,356.

Omaha Public Schools purchased 1,700 desktop and 600 notebook PCs from Gateway for the district this fall at a cost of $2.1 million. The new systems will be used by students, faculty, and staff in classrooms, computer labs, and on mobile carts for portable computer labs. With 90 schools, almost 46,000 students, and more than 7,000 employees, the Omaha Public School District is one of the top 100 districts in the nation.

Honeywell HON will be paid $8.8 million to upgrade building systems and reduce energy costs in four Illinois school districts: Schuyler-Industry in Rushville, Paw Paw in Paw Paw, Butler in Oak Brook, and Ridgeview in Colfax. The districts will fund the improvement from the energy and operational savings they produce. Honeywell is guaranteeing the savings under a performance contract, which varies depending on the district.

The Detroit Board of Education voted July 24 to award a five-year contract worth $58 million to four information technology vendors, including VisionIT, which will earn $45 million over five years. The vendors are Management Systems Consultants, Universal Sales and GVC Networks. Compuware, whose $70 million, five-year contract with the district expired in April, has filed a protest.

Harrisburg (PA) School District purchased a building from the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology for $12.5 million as of July 28. The building houses SciTech High, a high school centered on science and technology that is run jointly by the district and the university.

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