Roaring Fork School District

RUCKUS® 802.11ac Wave 2 deployed for greater performance

School districts are committed to academic excellence, ensuring that all students reach their maximum potential with support from their families, teachers, administration, and community. 21st century learning has brought on digital curriculums, an explosion of mobile devices on the network, and Common Core Standards that aim to unify and clarify student and teacher expectations across the country. This is placing huge demands on legacy networks forcing districts to upgrade their infrastructure with reliable Wi-Fi. Preparing the next generation in their academic journey, districts are migrating to 802.11ac Wave 2 at a low cost to ensure digital learning.

Challenges

To meet those needs, Roaring Fork School District, began a big bang approach to upgrade its Wi-Fi infrastructure across the entire district. Tucked away among the western slopes of Colorado, Roaring Fork School District is divided into three communities: Glenwood Springs, Carbondale, and Basalt. About 20 miles southwest of Aspen, RFSD serves 5,700 students over 11 PreK-12 schools. As the increase in mobile devices make their way into the classroom, RFSD was challenged with their legacy infrastructure. It was not providing the necessary performance or coverage that was needed. With the different types of communication being conveyed to students, parents, and staff through the cloud, reliable Wi-Fi was essential. RFSDs decision to move to 802.11ac was prompted by funding for a future 1:1 initiative to provide each student with a Chromebook. Today, the district provides their students with Chromebooks to share. Moving towards digital learning, these devices are essential for classroom applications and tasks. RFSD was in need of a robust and reliable network to handle an ever-increasing BYOD (bring your own device) environment. They also wanted a network that could grow as they continue to add more voice and video over the network. Like so many other school districts, cost was one of the biggest challenges when considering an upgrade to the network.