WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. By John F. Bailey. August 18, 2008: Ron Velez of White Plains was approved Monday night by the Board of Education as the new Director of Management Information Systems for the White Plains City School District. Velez comes to the White Plains district, having been the Manager of Information Systems for the East Ramapo School District in Rockland County (Spring Valley).

Velez has been, according to Dr. Lenora Boehlert, Assistant Suprintendent for Human Resources, has been in his present position for eight years, and in information systems for 10 years before that. He has sixteen years of experience.

She said Mr. Velez is familiar with the Infinite Campus data management program recently purchased for the White Plains district at a cost of $300,000, because the East Ramapo District was in the process of adopting the same program. She said the East Ramapo district has not implemented it fully yet and is in the process of doing that. Dr. Boehlert reports that Mr. Velez has been engaged in implementing the Infinite Campus program in the East Ramapo district.

The new Infinite Campus system has been touted as the district answer to providing longitudinal information tracking that BOCES, its previous provided had been unable to provide. The BOCES system was contracted for previously because the current White Plains data management team of Lucy Roman and Larry Killian and been unsuccessful in implementing  longitudinal studies due to the limitations of White Plains data systems implemented in the late 1990s. Infinite Campus is expected to take three years before the staff and departments and faculty can fully make use of its capabilities.

Mr. Velez is expected to begin his new assignment with White Plains September 8, at a salary of $150,000 a year.

The East Ramapo School District proposed a school budget of $193.4 Million for 2008-2009, which was defeated by the voters. The district, in response, adopted an austerity budget that was actually more than the proposed budget due to the legislative actions in increasing school aid last spring, while the state secretly decreased the STAR exemption to pay for the increased aid. The District has 8,244 students as of the end of 2007, and is 59% Black, 22% Hispanic, and 11% white in demographic make-up.