By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

The Alabaster Board of Education is looking to create a “seamless transition” with technology in the city’s schools as Alabaster works to finalize its split from the Shelby County School System, said Alabaster Interim School Superintendent Dr. Phillip Hammonds.

During a May 6 work session, which was attended by School Board member Adam Moseley and several central school office employees, Hammonds said the district is working with several agencies, companies and individuals to ensure everything from teacher email accounts to school servers are set up in time for the school district’s formation.

“Like we’ve said before, we want everything to move as seamlessly as possible,” Hammonds said. “All of this has to come together at some point. There is still a lot of work left to go.”

Hammonds presented those in attendance with a copy of a letter providing updates on the city’s school technology. According to the letter, Alabaster teachers will receive information about their “@alabasterschools.org” email addresses before the end of the current school year.

Hammonds said several teachers have inquired about the email system over the past several weeks, and said the Alabaster School Board will use email to communicate with teachers over the summer break.

Crews also will work over the summer months to reconfigure each school’s computers to connect to the Alabaster schools network.

During the work session, US Teks representative Kevin Fuller said the Alabama Supercomputer Authority is working to connect each school to a 100-megabit Internet link.

“The most any of the schools have now is 10 megabits, so it should be about 10 times faster than it is now,” Fuller said.