By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Washington County School District of Utah serves more than forty thousand K-12 students with connectivity as well or perhaps better than many other districts in the country while spending much, much fewer dollars per student compared to the national average. So how do they do it? CIO Jeremy Cox says it’s all about great people and a little help from some trusted vendors – all the while keeping things simple.
The numbers are big: More than 40,000 K-12 students at 55 school locations, some of which are as far apart as 150 kilometers or more. Connectivity is of course paramount for effective learning and you might think that Utah’s sprawling Washington County School District needs to spend a lot on networking and IT – and not least support – to keep everything up and running. Instead the opposite is true: According to a 2021 study, this Utah district spends nearly the least amount of dollars per student in the country (multiples less than districts in New York and Boston) – and still gets great results.
So what’s their secret? Director of Technology and CIO Jeremy Cox gives credit where credit is due. “We’re blessed with the most talented, dedicated, and creative staff, and we’re proud to say we’ve got an excellent work culture here. It’s a recipe you can’t beat. But we’re also thankful to a couple of vendors that help to keep our connectivity running and operations efficient,” Jeremy Cox says.
The district operates close to 1500 RUCKUS Networks Wi-Fi APs equivalent to approximately one AP for every 2-3 classrooms. Kids in Utah are not permitted to use their own devices in school so instead schools in this district offer access to a total of more than 55,000 Chromebook PCs that stay and are used only within the classrooms.
This may make it a little easier to ensure stable and predictable Wi-Fi network performance – but Jeremy Cox says RUCKUS has done well. “We’ve run RUCKUS APs for more than 10 years and continue to do so, although the costs have recently been rising as we transition to Wi-Fi 7. The beamforming antennas continue to be great. The district has a 5-7 year generational upgrade cycle for Wi-Fi,” he says.
NetAlly’s LinkSprinter and Link-Live
Jeremy Cox keeps IT operations lean with only about 40 staff supporting the entire district – equivalent to about one IT support person per thousand students, which he contends is a lot less than the national average. Important tools in his arsenal includes NetAlly’s LinkSprinter which is a compact, low-cost Ethernet tester. Every tech supporter has one such device in his or her toolbox allowing for fast troubleshooting and immediate uploading of test results to NetAlly’s Link-Live centralised dashboard for further analysis, Jeremy Cox says.
“Link-Live has been phenomenal because our network team gets quick access to test results via the dashboard. As a result we often don’t need to send network teams to fix problems at remote locations, which can be an hour or more away by car. Instead we can fix most things from our central office, which makes for excellent efficiency,” he says. For more comprehensive testing and analysis, the district owns a small fleet of NetAlly EtherScope and Aircheck handheld testers. They’re not used as often but come in handy when workloads are heavy – such as during school start when Jeremy Cox’s organisation logs and resolves up to a whopping 1300 trouble tickets per week.
Jeremy Cox has been working for Washington County School District’s IT and technology operations for more than 20 years – and when asked if there’s a secret to success he also points to simplicity. “It’s human nature to want the best of the best in equipment and perhaps overthink your technology choices. In our experience, simple and less costly equipment makes more sense and sometimes even performs better, such as for example our 2×2 Wi-Fi APs. It also helps a lot to have staff that know how to think on their feet to find solutions. They love their jobs,” he says.
/Claus.
