Case Study: Spring Independent School District achieves district-wide secure, scalable Wi-Fi for 27,000+ students with HPE Aruba Networking

K-12 School District Makes Big Move to Wireless, Giving Students, Faculty and IT Staff Hassle Free Connectivity

Spring Independent School District, a 25‑school K–12 district north of Houston serving roughly 27,000–29,000 students, needed to deliver one‑to‑one, always‑on network access districtwide but found wired Ethernet drops too costly and inflexible. IT leaders required a centrally managed “thin” AP architecture that supported 802.11a/b/g, multi‑layer security (beyond link‑layer encryption), RF and intrusion detection across 2.4/5 GHz, seamless scaling to thousands of users, migration to 802.1X, and a solution that fit tight budget constraints.

Spring ISD deployed an Aruba solution—5000 Mobility Controller, ArubaOS with VPN, RF management and WIP, and more than 200 Aruba 52 dual‑band APs (initial phase: one controller, 75 APs districtwide and a full rollout of 28 APs at one middle school). The result is centralized, cost‑efficient management; scalable, phased deployment supporting thousands of simultaneous users; layered security (WPA, user/device authentication, user‑aware firewalling, RF monitoring); and a clear path to distribute laptops and Wi‑Fi devices to students and staff, targeting nearly 30,000 wireless devices within five years.

Spring Independent School District

Pete Davis

Network Engineering, Spring ISD