King Chavez Neighborhood of Schools is a family of five free public charter schools in the San Diego, California area, serving more than 1,500 students from transitional kindergarten (TK) through 12th grade. While KCNS provides a broad range of learning opportunities and activities, like many other school systems, it has learned how to leverage technology to further enrich the learning and teaching experiences.
“We needed a state of the art network that was ready for all of the great teaching and learning happening in our classrooms.”
Carlos Salazar, Director of Technology and Innovation, King Chavez Neighborhood of Schools
King Chavez had been using the San Diego Unified District’s network, but support for charter schools was being phased out. That, along with ongoing network quality and IT support challenges, drove King Chavez to explore options for building out its own network infrastructure. One of its major initiatives was to provide every student and teacher with laptops and/or iPads to participate in classroom activities, access the learning management system, participate in online testing, build out a virtual art exhibit, and other needs. King Chavez also had to work with a number of different vendors, systems, and timelines to transition everything to its new Extreme network, including security systems, HVAC systems, fire alarms, and other operations technology. To complicate things even more, King Chavez runs a serverless network, which required working through additional intricacies to ensure optimal access and connectivity.
