ORGANIZATION: Shawnee Mission School District
HEADQUARTERS: Shawnee Mission, Kan.
STUDENTS: 27,450
I.T. STAFF: 5
DESCRIPTION: Incorporated in 1969, when 13 school districts unified, the Shawnee Mission School District is the third largest district in Kansas. Today, it encompasses 33 elementary schools, five middle schools and five high schools, serving 14 communities in metropolitan Kansas City.
At a Glance
A Kansas school district modernizes teaching and learning and paves the way to a one-to-one program with a comprehensive upgrade of its wireless and telephony systems.
Shawnee Mission School District’s Bill Sandburg and Leigh Anne Neal credit the district’s wireless and phone upgrades with enhancing classroom learning and collaboration opportunities.
CASE STUDY
TECHNOLOGY FOR EVERYONE
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Parents, board members and administrators have a clear
vision of how they want to see the Shawnee Mission School
District evolve. Their goal: to put computers and tablets into
the hands of every teacher and student.
Before the Johnson County, Kan., district could move
forward with a one-to-one program and energize
classrooms with modern teaching and learning, it needed
to upgrade its aging technology infrastructure.
Beginning in early 2012 and continuing over several
months, a committee of key decision-makers met to
offer and evaluate suggestions for a range of capital
improvements, says Associate Superintendent for
Communications Leigh Anne Neal. Better support for
classroom technology, a more robust network and a new
telephone system (to replace the nearly 20-year-old system
in place at the time) were near the top of the committee’s list
of recommendations.
“The committee believed strongly that curricular needs
should inform classroom technology planning,” Neal explains.
“A survey of the community and staff identified technology
as an essential need.”
Not long after the recommendations were made, the local
school board approved capital outlay funding for a wireless
network upgrade (from 802.11g to 802.11n) and a new Voice
over IP phone system with unified communications features.
Making ChoicesAccording to Neal, a district selection committee spent the
better part of summer and fall 2012 reviewing offerings from
several wireless and telephony equipment manufacturers.
Multiple meetings were held to understand the advantages
and disadvantages of each system and how it would best
serve the district.
By late winter, the committee had narrowed its list to Aruba
Networks for wireless and Cisco Systems for telephony and
unified communications. After identifying which specific
solutions to deploy in early 2013, district leaders selected
CDW to implement them. CDW’s strong partner relationships
with Aruba and Cisco, as well as its engineering and
deployment experience with both sets of technologies, were
important factors in that decision.
“By selecting a single vendor to install the phone and
wireless systems at the same time, we were able to complete
the work in a much shorter time frame using the same field
personnel, resulting in both efficiencies and cost savings,”
Neal says, adding that having CDW conduct one network
infrastructure assessment for both projects during its initial
phase also saved time and money.
According to Kourtney Dierking, CDW’s K–12 field account
executive on the project, district officials chose Aruba
because its wireless equipment supported video traffic and
multimedia more effectively. They selected Cisco for UC
and telephony because they wanted updated systems with
unified communications features, she adds.
“They wanted modern telephony, the ability to collaborate
by running video conferences and WebEx sessions, and
instant messaging and presence via Jabber,” Dierking says.
Even fairly simple features, such as “Find Me, Follow Me”
within Cisco’s UC solution, make a big difference to the staff,
Neal says. “Now, I can have my desk phone number follow
me wherever I go and pick up in the field on my cellphone,”
she explains. “It’s just a much better way for us to work
and remain connected when we are out at various schools
during the day.”
Cisco Unified Communications technology also integrates
well with the district’s Microsoft Exchange email software
and back-end Cisco switches, adds Bill Sandburg, the
district’s supervisor of telecommunications. Another
important UC feature is the Cisco Emergency Responder
application, which lets the district receive notification of any
911 calls — including the district location from which a call
originates — in real time.
On the Wi-Fi front, Sandburg says the IT department
appreciates the more granular diagnostics available through
Aruba’s AirWave Network Management tool. “While most
management tools will let you look at the present activity
of a client, AirWave lets us look at the past activity of all
CASE STUDY
72 The total landmass, in square miles, of the Shawnee Mission School District — a distance that encompasses
53 buildings
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Technology Makes It HappenA massive undertaking, the technology
overhaul at the Shawnee Mission School
District was conceived and deployed in a
matter of months. The following pieces
brought the new system to life:
Wireless
ClearPass Access Management System
AirWave Network Management
2,323 — Aruba AP-134 and AP-135 wireless
access points
7 — Aruba 7210 mobility controllers
UC Servers
2 — Cisco UCS C240 M3 rack-mount servers
1 — Cisco UCS C220 M3 rack-mount server
Phones
3,191 — Cisco Unified IP Phone 6945
171 — Cisco Unified IP Phone 8945
8 — Cisco Unified IP Phone 9951
Back-End Network Switches
187 — Cisco Catalyst 2960-S
Data Center Networking
1 — Cisco Catalyst 6807-XL core router
1 — Cisco Nexus 7009 data center switch
1 — Cisco ASR 1002-X Internet router
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the clients so we can get a better sense of what’s been
happening on the network,” he explains.
The management system also offers Sandburg’s team the
ability to centrally manage and schedule firmware update
deployments to the wireless network’s access points and
controllers. “This saves my staff time and provides for
greater system uptime for our students, staff and guest
users,” he says.
Its extensive reporting capabilities, meanwhile, “allow
my staff to monitor the health of the network by reviewing
scheduled daily reports on the network’s status,” he adds.
“This allows them to spot issues and correct them.”
Aruba’s ClearPass Access Management System enabled
IT to easily set up a guest network for personal devices. “The
ClearPass Access Management System provides extensive
monitoring capabilities on the client authentication process,”
Sandburg says. “It’s an invaluable tool in resolving client
authentication issues.”
Laying the GroundworkOnce the contract was signed in February 2013, district
officials worked closely with CDW’s project management team
to plan the full scope of the project. As planning progressed,
CDW performed a network readiness assessment in each of
the district’s 53 buildings to determine any additional network
switching needs and other network requirements to ensure
optimal telephony and wireless performance.
The new 802.11n wireless network operates in both the
2.4- and 5-gigahertz bands, but it’s “configured to coax the
clients to prefer using the 5GHz band,” Sandburg explains.
“Throughput also has been improved.”
“By putting an access point in every classroom, the district
went above and beyond the norm. But they wanted to have
that density of coverage to give teachers and students a
richer experience,” says Dan Morris, a senior project manager
for CDW. “Another one of our big challenges was simply the
time frame, because we had to have the network up and
running by the time the new school year started in August.”
By March, the Shawnee Mission IT team and CDW installers
were conducting walk-throughs in all district buildings to
determine phone and access point placement. Final design
work on the wireless network and phone system began later
that month, and final review of all site surveys was completed
in April. Phone system programming began shortly after
that, and the first installation and cutovers began in May
and continued through the summer. New phones with the
UC features, along with an AP, were placed in each classroom,
Neal says.
Moving ForwardAlready, teachers and staff are quite taken with the new phone
system — particularly the unified communications features.
“We’re finding that people are using the presence and
chat features in Jabber more often now,” Neal says. The
“Find Me, Follow Me” feature also proved its value during
a February snowstorm that crippled the area. “It was very
helpful to me in continuing my work,” she adds. “I could take
business calls from my home that I normally wouldn’t have
been able to receive.”
The improved wireless capacity and unified communications
have already had a dramatic impact in the classroom as well.
“The ability to have more concurrent wireless connections
within our classrooms offers teachers and students a faster
option for accessing digital media and for collaborating on
projects in the future,” she says.
That future is coming fast. Thanks to a $20 million capital
outlay approved by the school board, the district is beginning
the first phase of its one-to-one program. Over the next two
years, Neal says, close to 20,000 new devices will be rolled out.
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A Clear AssessmentCollaborating with CDW on a comprehensive network
overhaul offers distinct advantages, says Leigh Anne
Neal, associate superintendent for communications for
the Shawnee Mission School District. The company’s
telephony and wireless networking expertise came
in especially handy during its initial assessment of the
district’s infrastructure, she adds.
Because the district’s ultimate goal is one-to-one
computing — it plans to add 20,000 devices over the next
two years — the CDW team had to confirm that Shawnee
Mission could handle the anticipated increase in network
traffic, explains Kourtney Dierking, a K–12 field account
executive at CDW.
To that end, Technical Lead Jason Netherland “visited
every site and network closet, looked at the switches
and routers, and reported back to us on what needed
to be done,” says Senior Project Manager Dan Morris.
Adds Dierking: “The assessment showed that the
district needed to improve its capacity, which is why we
recommended they deploy additional network switches
and wireless access points.”
CDW also recommended that the district add Cisco
UC servers and new IP phones. “We knew we were
taking an old analog phone system and putting it on
the district’s network, so it was clear that Shawnee
Mission needed some updated telephony equipment
to make that happen,” Dierking explains.
Indeed, Netherland’s initial infrastructure assessment
has served as a useful blueprint throughout the
multipronged project. “The whole idea was to roll out the
technology in phases,” Dierking says. The first phase
encompassed the wireless and telephony improvements,
which were completed in fall 2013. Phase two, which
began in March, involves deploying two Cisco Nexus core
routers to solidify the backbone network in the district’s
data center.
Work on the third phase — installing IP video security
cameras — will take place throughout the spring. That,
she adds, “will give the district the added security
capabilities it’s been looking for.”
In March, every teacher was issued a notebook and tablet.
The program will expand further in the fall, when all high
school students will receive a notebook and all middle school
students will get tablets. Middle and high school students
will be able to take the devices home with them to support
their learning both in and out of the classroom.
The implementation of fully integrated technology will
be phased in at the elementary schools. Ten have been
preselected to participate in the first phase of the rollout
during the 2014–2015 school year. Third- through sixth-
grade students at these schools will receive tablets that
they will be able to take home; K–2 students, meanwhile, will
have access to tablets in the classroom only.
Students at the remaining 23 elementary schools will
have access to tablet carts for the 2014–2015 school year. A
full implementation will commence in those locations during
the 2015–2016 school year.
Neal says district leaders are sensitive to the equity
issue when deciding between a one-to-one and bring-
your-own-device program. “Districts are wrestling with
this now, and many are choosing one-to-one,” she says.
“By leveling the playing field and providing access to all
students, we think our program will be successful. We also
plan to supplement the device rollout with significant and
meaningful training for staff, especially on how technology
can improve teaching and learning in the classroom.”Phot
ogra
phs
by D
an V
idet
ich
CASE STUDY
“The ability to have more concurrent wireless connections within our classrooms offers teachers and students a faster option for accessing digital media and for collaborating on projects.” — Leigh Anne Neal, Associate Superintendent for Communications
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