WWW.WISPA.ORG 9 www.bekabusinessmedia.com DAY 1 Hurst-Euless-Bedford District Renews 20-year Contract with FiberLight FiberLight LLC, a fiber infrastructure provider with more than 20 years of experience building and operating mission-critical, high-bandwidth networks, announced the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District (HEB ISD), has signed a 20-year contract to continue its partnership with the infrastructure provider. FiberLight began working with HEB ISD nearly 25 years ago when the school district needed a fiber provider to service kindergarten through high school students across a 40-acre region in northern Texas. Over the years, FiberLight worked with HEB ISD to scale to meet the growing needs of its school community as it expanded across new campuses and introduced next-generation technology – including a major upgrade that enabled the district to deliver cloudbased learning across 30 campuses. When the original agreement expired and the contract went to RFP, HEB ISD signed a new 20-year contract with FiberLight citing its consistent up-time, scalability and superior service in meeting the demands of a forwardlooking school community. “FiberLight and the district have been partners for well over 20 years,” said Scott Forester, director of technology at HurstEuless-Bedford Independent School District. “When we went out to RFP, one thing we looked at was the benefit of uptime. A large proportion of our infrastructure is cloud-based and hosted in the cloud, and without a solid foundation that our cable plant provides, we would be sunk. FiberLight’s 99.9% uptime is invaluable. All our scaling up has been seamless, and the backbone layer that supports our growth has been smooth and consistent. FiberLight has been excellent in getting that done.” HEB ISD uses a Metro model that relies on FiberLight’s 10-gig backbone to connect to the district’s internet provider and delivers Ethernet point-to-point access to its 30 campuses. HEB ISD also relies on FiberLight’s 20-gig connection between its two data centers that mirror one another for redundancy and provide critical backup for the district. “Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District is one of FiberLight’s largest networks supporting K-12 education in the state of Texas,” said Mike Ellison. vice president of Public Sector for FiberLight. “We’re proud to work with them to enable a hub and spoke model that delivers internet to their school community and enables next-generation learning for more than 23,000 students.” For additional information on FiberLight and its successes, visit booth 208 on the Exhibition Floor. m After an internship working with traumatized children was cut short because of the COVID pandemic, Sarah Pugliese missed being able to help kids who had been through extreme hardships. Instead of letting the pandemic stop her passion, however, she brainstormed a project to help kids by sending them care packages through the mail. That is how the Topaz Fairy Project was born. The Topaz Fairy Project is now a nonprofit that sends kids going through trauma and hardships a care package. A few examples of situations include medical trauma, bullying, loss of family members, surviving abuse and more. For a magical twist, these care packages come from a fairy friend named Topaz. Each care package is customized to the respective recipient child, so it is as unique as the child receiving it. The package contains toys based on the youngster ’s interests, tasty treats and a personalized note to help encourage her or him. After learning what the children are going through, Topaz writes notes full of customized compliments and encouragements, so the youngsters feel acknowledged and know someone believes in them. What started as a hope of helping a few kids in a small hometown has turned into a nationwide mission to send magic to kids in need. To date, more than 460 children throughout the United States have received a box from Topaz. Pugliese even keeps in touch with some of them regularly as a “fairy pen pal.” Along with making care bags for officers and justice centers to keep on hand, TFP also has sponsored a Christmas party for a justice center. One hundred percent of the donations goes toward the kids in this project. m WISPA Asks for Your Support of Topaz Fairy Project for Kids
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