Orange County Public Schools and ENA Celebrate New Internet Network for Teachers...

Orange County Public Schools and ENA Celebrate New Internet Network for Teachers and Students

Enhanced Network Services Providing Increased Educational
Opportunities for District's Students
ORLANDO, Fla.--(Business Wire)--The Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) and Education Networks of
America (ENA) said today that all schools and administrative offices
in the district have been successfully connected to a new and enhanced
high-speed broadband Internet network.

School and ENA officials said the network has now been
successfully operating for more than 90 days providing students and
teachers access to increased Internet capacity, more applications and
other on-line educational resources that previously weren't available
for classrooms. Officials pointed to a number of new applications
currently in use to take advantage of more up-to-date learning
resources. One is a new web-based literacy program that is being used
in a wireless laptop classroom at Westridge Middle School called
BLASTT - Building Literacy and Skills Through Technology.

Other web-based applications include gradebooks, FCAT Explorer,
web-based portals for parents and teachers and student-tracking
systems. These improved features, officials said, are providing
increased productivity for teachers and enhanced learning
opportunities for students in a diverse and rapidly expanding student
population.

"In partnership with ENA, the Managed Broadband Internet Access
project has enabled significantly increased access to web-based
resources and applications for the classroom," said George Perreault,
Director, Instructional Technology & Library Media Services for OCPS.
"Prior to the new network, it was simply not possible for an entire
classroom of students to effectively access a website simultaneously.
Our goal is fostering constant innovation and utilizing educational
technology to prepare our students for the 21st Century, and this
increased bandwidth to all our schools enables us to make that a
reality."

ENA was awarded the three-year contract last year and all of OCPS'
K-12 schools are connected to the managed district-wide high-speed
network that provides a fundamental infrastructure to support student
achievement. OCPS currently has a full-time enrollment of 176,000
students and 12,000 teachers. It is the 11th largest school system in
the country with 175 schools and the fourth largest in the state of
Florida. OCPS presently has approximately 50,000 computers in its
schools that are using ENA's managed district-wide network to access
the Internet.

"We could not be more proud of this network and the educational
benefits it will bring to Orlando public school students," said David
Pierce, President and CEO of ENA. "At the end of the day, we're in the
business of providing school systems with the best network and
communication services possible to support teaching and learning.
We're confident we have such a system in Orlando, and look forward to
serving the District over the coming years."

About Education Networks of America (ENA)

ENA is a leading managed network service provider in the design,
deployment and management of network and communication services for
school systems, libraries and governments. In 1996, ENA created one of
the first statewide K-12 networks in the U.S. and has earned a
reputation as experts in distributed networks and voice solutions.
Today, ENA manages multiple statewide and district-wide education and
library networks, successfully serving over 450 school districts, 2
million students, educators and administrators, and over 300
libraries. For more information about the company, visit www.ena.com.

About Orange County Public Schools (OCPS)

Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) is the nation's 11th largest
school district with more than 176,000 students. OCPS is the fourth
largest school district in the state of Florida. The school district
employs more than 25,000 people and is the second largest employer in
Orange County, Florida. OCPS has 175 schools, which are divided into
six area learning communities. An ongoing aggressive building program
will ensure that all district facilities are modernized and
accommodate the region's rapid growth. OCPS reflects the rich cultural
diversity of the Central Florida community. The district's major
academic indicators have consistently improved over the past several
years.

OCPS:
Kathy Marsh, 407-317-3458
or
ENA:
Mark Day, 615-347-8999

Copyright Business Wire 2008