VB School Board may purchase new server to avoid 25% tariff

A special meeting of the Van Buren Public Schools Board of Education was set for 6:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 19, to buy an internet server that was expected to go up 25% in price the next day because of federal tariffs.
The board was expected to approve the purchase from Sentinel Technologies of 3 HPE servers, 1 storage array, and 2 backup storage repositories for the total amount of $319,846.05. This includes engineering support for design, implementation and training. Pricing is from the Omni pre-bid contract. Funding will come from the general fund.
In a memo to the board, Sean Garland, IT Administrator, said the current infrastructure has not been supported for 2 years and is beginning to fail. Waiting to purchase runs the risk of approximately 25% increase in project cost over the next couple of weeks.
“The project was accelerated some by the issues that occurred but is really being pulled forward aggressively by the coming tariffs… “In order to avoid an increased cost on the hardware, we are seeking to purchase this as soon as possible,” Garland said in the memo.
The paperwork presented to the board notes the contract delivery date as March 14 and the proposal expires March 20.