Case Study: East Side Union High School District achieves digital equity by closing the homework gap with RUCKUS Networks

Closing the homework gap with RUCKUS

East Side Union High School District (ESUHSD), the largest district in Northern California with more than 22,000 students and a 95% minority population, faced a pressing homework gap: roughly a third of students lacked home internet access and were forced to rely on school libraries to complete digital coursework. The district needed to extend reliable, high‑performance Wi‑Fi into surrounding neighborhoods while avoiding interference and maintaining throughput as the network expanded.

In partnership with the city of San José and integrator SmartWave, ESUHSD deployed RUCKUS outdoor APs (T600/T700) with BeamFlex+, ChannelFly, SmartMesh, SmartZone controllers and RUCKUS AI—about 1,800 outdoor APs across multiple attendance areas. The plug‑and‑play, MU‑MIMO solution reduced interference, supported more concurrent users with fewer units, enabled district Chromebooks, and scaled from one attendance area to cover thousands of students and, ultimately, some 360,000 households across 12 square miles—closing the homework gap and delivering measurable, cost‑efficient digital equity.

East Side Union High School District

Randy Phelps

Chief Technology Officer