Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District Preps for 21st Century Learning with Aruba Networks Gigabit Wireless Network

Aruba Networks, an HP company, (NYSE:HPQ) today announced that Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District (CFISD) of Houston, the third largest school district in Texas and the 23^rd largest in the nation, is deploying a new Gigabit wireless infrastructure to support the district’s commitment to 21^st century K-12 education. Using Aruba’s 802.11ac solution and ClearPass Policy Management platform, CFISD plans to adopt a Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) policy for its 113,000+ students and 14,000 staff and teachers.

As part of its vision to maximize students’ potential and prepare them to be global leaders, CFISD realized they needed to deploy the right technology across their school campuses and in their classrooms. The district is implementing a one-to-many device strategy and will allow students and staff to bring their own devices onto the school campuses.

“We expect to support nearly a half million devices,” said Frankie Jackson, Chief Technology Officer, CFISD. “To do this successfully, we need a reliable, high speed infrastructure that can scale, can deliver uninterrupted coverage across our schools and in the classrooms, and can authenticate and provide secure access for all of these devices.”

To address these challenges, CFISD replaced its existing wireless infrastructure with Aruba’s 802.11ac solution, installing more than 8,000 Aruba 200 Series Access Points both indoors and outdoors, 7200 Series Mobility Controllers, AirWave network management and ClearPass for 802.1X and guest wireless authentication. With the help of partner Layer 3 Communications of Houston, Texas, the district is currently installing the new infrastructure in its middle and high schools and plans to roll out the new wireless network in its elementary schools in the fall.

Said Jackson, “Our vision in this district is that in our classrooms, every teacher and every student can be connected at very fast speeds 100 percent of the time. We anticipate elementary students bringing at least one device onto campus with them, middle schoolers bringing two and at the high school level, as many as three per student. By enabling a reliable, high-speed connection for these devices, we hope to not only increase the use of technology in the classroom, but to improve overall academic achievement by allowing students to collaborate, communicate, problem-solve and engage in creative and critical thinking.”