BEEVILLE — The Beeville Independent School District’s records for each graduate are being digitized — all 180 boxes of them.

The project, announced by BISD Superintendent Dr. Sue Thomas at the board’s regular meeting Oct. 16, will take between 20 and 30 working days to complete and cost between $4,000 and $8,000.

“Each student’s records contain about four pages each,” Thomas explains. That’s after BISD personnel spent weeks culling through the records to remove anything the district did not need to convert to digital records.

Thomas hired the Records Consultants, Inc. company in San Antonio to scan the documents; for years, the same company has handled the destruction of sensitive BISD documents.

“This is the first time we have used RCI for scanning graduate records,” Thomas says.

RCI personnel were loading the boxes on a company truck early Monday.

The earliest record, she says, was for students who were graduated in the 1930s.

Once scanned, RCI will burn the records will to CDs. BISD will store them in a large safe. The original records then will be destroyed.

RCI will keep a separate backup of the CDs.

Bill Clough is a reporter at the Bee-Picayune and can be reached at 358-2550, ext. 122, or at beepic@mySouTex.com.