Kennewick schools lay out device, filtering and AI plans; parental controls due in September

Kennewick School District information-technology staff on Thursday reviewed network capacity, device inventories, content-filtering upgrades and preliminary guidance for classroom use of artificial intelligence, and told the school board several tools and parent-facing controls will be rolled out in September.

The update, delivered by Eric Veach during the district’s board business meeting, outlined the district’s core technology infrastructure, student-device counts and planned policy steps. Veach said the district operates a 10-gigabit external internet connection with a 100-gigabit internal port leased between buildings, has layered on multifactor authentication and uses vendors for penetration testing and security monitoring.

Veach said the district can now account for about 17,500 Chromebooks and 4,500 iPads in its fleet and that device replacement is budgeted roughly on a five-year cycle. He said Chromebooks will continue to be the primary student device because they are “financially viable and easy to manage.”

The district’s web-filtering vendor, ContentKeeper, will be upgraded to…