Case Study: Escambia County School District achieves district-wide Gigabit Wi-Fi for 1:1 digital learning with HPE Aruba Networking

Aruba Gigabit Wi-Fi enables student-centered learning success

Escambia County School District in Florida launched Vision 2020 to deliver student-centered learning for 43,000 students, including a 1:1 Chromebook program, but the district needed pervasive, reliable wireless to make digital learning practical. The challenge was to provide high-density, unified Wi‑Fi and wired access that could support a wide variety of devices, apps and media across 50+ schools while keeping network operations efficient.

The district deployed Aruba 802.11ac access points, 7200 Series Mobility Controllers, Mobility Access Switches and AirWave management—more than 3,600 APs, 300 switches and 50 controllers—to deliver campus-wide gigabit Wi‑Fi and centralized management. E‑Rate funding accelerated the rollout to 18 months, enabling a seven-person team to manage the network efficiently; benefits include ubiquitous classroom Wi‑Fi, simplified operations and measurable learning gains (third-grade language arts scores rose from 51% to 59% year over year).

Escambia County School District

Tom Ingram

Coordinator of Technology Services