McGuffey board approves cloud upgrade for finance system and extends internet service contracts

The McGuffey School District Board approved a vendor-hosted upgrade of the district’s Prosoft financial-management system to a web-based Harris solution. The vendor package included a one-time setup fee of $5,850 and a recurring annual hosting fee of $9,000, according to staff. Administrators said the current on-premises Prosoft installation is more than 20 years old, increasingly slow, and soon will be unsupported; moving to a vendor-hosted system is intended to centralize support, reduce internal license maintenance and improve responsiveness. Board members asked about outage risk; staff said Harris provides hosting and technical support and would be responsible for data security under the hosting agreement.

Separately, the board approved an extension of a one‑year dedicated 1 GB internet service contract with Comcast Business Communications LLC at $975 per month, pending solicitor review. The board also approved a three‑year Comcast agreement for higher bandwidth; the transcript records the amount unclearly (transcript: '87848 $1 7848 per month'). The three‑year contract was moved, seconded and carried pending solicitor approval.

Board discussion focused on tradeoffs between on-premises licenses and vendor hosting, projected reductions in local license counts, and contingency planning for potential temporary outages of a hosted service. The motions carried as recorded in the public minutes.