Case Study: Elk Grove Unified School District achieves rapid, secure district‑wide Wi‑Fi and “Classrooms without Walls” learning with HPE Aruba Networking

Bringing Down Classroom Walls Technology Proves Pivotal for California School District

Elk Grove Unified School District, serving 63,000 students and supporting 6,210 staff, needed a simple, secure and highly available wireless network to support 50,000 Chromebooks, online testing and a “Classrooms without Walls” digital initiative — all with limited IT personnel and budget. Aging access points and growing mobile use created performance and security challenges that threatened instructional goals and day‑to‑day operations.

The district deployed Aruba 802.11ac Wave 2 Instant access points with ClearPass for policy‑based security and AirWave for centralized monitoring, rolling out 3,000 APs in two months. The integrated solution automated device onboarding, simplified management, sped troubleshooting, freed the IT team for strategic work, and contributed to measurable student-writing gains in Title I schools.

Elk Grove Unified School District

Steve Mate

Chief Technology Officer