Columbia Public Schools

Nation’s First Deployment of 802.11ac Wave 2 Technology Shows How Schools Can Stay Ahead of Insatiable Wireless Demands

There has been a huge movement by educational institutions around the world to provide their students with the best gigabit Wi-Fi service. Say goodbye to the days of chalkboards and textbooks as the proliferation of social media and technology has changed the way educators teach and students learn. Because of this tide, schools are in need of reliable and fast Wi-Fi. There is nothing worse than a teacher taking time to create a digital lesson plan only to have the Wi-Fi unavailable. This forces teachers to have a plan B, doubling their work for each day. And let’s not forget about the student. Students are excited to learn using digital devices. When things are not working, disappointment sets in. Schools are desperately searching to fix this problem, hence they are ready to ride the RUCKUS® Wave 2 to get their Wi-Fi in perfect condition.

The Challenges

Centered in Columbia, Missouri, Columbia Public Schools (CPS) serves more than 18K students covering over 300 square miles between St. Louis and Kansas City. CPS is accredited with Distinction by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education supporting over 30 K-12 schools. With a large student body covering the district, CPS was struggling with their network bandwidth. Their teachers were making the effort to incorporate more digital tools into their teaching only to have no internet access for the students to perform the lesson. Major frustration was taking place among the teachers and the students weren’t enjoying the ride either.

Today, CPS provides an iPad for every two students. The future goal is for every student to have their own iPad. This, combined with the increasing numbers of smart phones and other Wi-Fi enabled devices, places an even higher demand in density on the network. According to the school officials, in spite of the staggering number of man hours dedicated to keeping the wireless network up and running it could not be counted on to be available when needed. Both of those challenges are now eliminated with their new Smart Wi-Fi infrastructure from RUCKUS. They have the reliability and speed needed to support their rapidly growing community without increasing the resources required for support.