Teachers give so much. In recognition of National Teacher Appreciation Week, I want to say thank you to everyone in the profession who gives their best every day. They hold our future in their classrooms, and they ensure the next generation is equipped to meet any challenge they may face.
Those of us working in technology to support school districts understand that having uninterrupted connectivity is so important, so we put our best efforts into our networking solutions to help prevent downtime and keep teachers teaching and keep students learning.
I was pleased to meet so many district IT leaders and support staff at the recent CoSN 2025 Annual Conference in Seattle. The event’s theme, “Human Leadership in a World of AI.” drew a record 1,300+ attendees. Juniper hosted a great session titled “More Than Ready: Districts Share AI Networking Progress.” It’s always exciting to gather and hear from K-12 IT leaders sharing real-world implementations of Juniper AI-native networking. I had the honor of moderating a panel of thought leaders in K-12. On the panel were:
- Shawn Canady, CIO, Lebanon School District, PA
- Roger Zambrano, Director Technology Services, Los Angeles County Office of Education, CA
- Chris Bailey, Director of Technology, Edmonds School District, WA,
- Fernando De Velasco, CTO of Prosper ISD, TX
We covered a lot of ground in a short time during the event, but here are my top five takeaways from the session, ranked for maximum dramatic impact:
#5: Prepare for growth
Our panelists were from across the country—Pennsylvania, Washington, Southern California, and Texas. What they had in common was some serious growth. Growing districts and digital learning demands mean more classrooms, more students, greater technology integration, and more work for existing IT staff to keep up with. Juniper Mist™, our AI-native networking platform, helps districts scale quickly, adding new devices and users easily and providing campuses with widespread, uninterrupted connectivity and, most importantly, happy users.
#4: Lock it down
Security is important to users and a few are asking, “What happens to my data?” We discussed how Mist Wi-Fi Assurance dynamically automates packet captures while a network issue is occurring, not payload data, and that once users understand how their data is used, they’re accepting of its use for maintaining network performance and reducing troubleshooting times. We also reminded the audience of our recent FedRAMP certification and our StateRAMP certification that gives district leadership confidence in the security of Juniper’s AI-native networking.
#3: Mist and the user experience
Roger Zambrano and his team support more than 80 school districts in L.A. County. They’ve rolled out Mist to support administration at HQ (extending Juniper to individual schools is forthcoming). He shared that Zoom is used heavily by administrators, and that prior to Mist, users would often report screen and audio freezes that were difficult to diagnose.
Since applying the Mist Zoom plug-in, his team can now quickly identify and resolve these types of connectivity issues when they arise. Mist analytics gives Roger’s team the ability to delve deeper and pinpoint the cause of disruption down to the individual device or application—and determine whether the problem lies with the network or elsewhere.
#2: Opportunities to delegate
Mist’s single pane of glass, AI automations, and intuitive interface are great for any network manager. Those features are also helping our panel participants extend their reach and train new staff faster.
Shawn Canady shared how Mist has allowed his department to take a chance and develop a new junior administrator just finishing up their degree program. Ease of use of the platform and user interface means that this person can quicky and accurately troubleshoot and get up to speed. Shawn said Mist is great for delegation and has given him the confidence to invest and grow this employee and send them to additional Juniper training this year.
#1: Juniper for life
Fernando De Velasco of Prosper, TX is a big fan of Juniper. He has used our full stack wired and wireless solution to help his district grow from serving 3,500 students when he joined in 2006 to more than 32,000 students today. He shared that he is adding a new school every year and managing over 3,000 Chromebooks distributed to high schoolers in the district. The rapid growth, the need to manage both new and legacy investments, and the evolving demands of students and staff could be a headache. Instead, it’s life changing.
“Here is my management control right on my phone, if I needed to,” he said. “That’s why we have Juniper—to make our lives easier. And easier means now we can dedicate our time to other things.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Juniper makes K-12 education networking easier and that makes it easier to deliver the connectivity and user experiences students and teachers deserve.
We had a great, wide-ranging conversation. To hear from other district IT leaders, I encourage you to watch another recent CoSN event webinar: Is Your School Ready for AI?
To learn more, visit our K-12 education solutions page.
