Azusa Unified reviews multi‑year technology upgrades including VoIP, Wi‑Fi 6 and expanded cybersecurity

Manuel Sanchez, the district’s director of management information systems, told the Azusa Unified School District Board of Education on April 8 that the district has completed major infrastructure work and is moving into a phase that assigns personal phone extensions and completes a Wi‑Fi 6 deployment.

Sanchez said the upgrades include a new data center with improved cable management and UPS capacity, a full migration to SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) phone service last week, replacement of dozens of network switches, and a planned rollout of 555 high‑density Wi‑Fi 6 access points for middle and high schools.

Sanchez said the work began with long‑standing reliability problems in the district data center and at school sites. "The new solution is...we transitioned to full SIP," he said, and added that the district increased its WAN/LAN transport capacity to 20 gigabits and that existing equipment can later support up to 100 gigabits if needed. He also described a move from UPS capacity of about 15 minutes to systems sized for roughly five hours of runtime.

Why it matters: the upgrades are intended to reduce daily outages, support larger numbers of student and staff devices, and give the district modern tools for classroom instruction, paging and emergency communication. Sanchez repeatedly framed the work as foundation work—data center and switching first, then systems, then classroom devices and services.

Key technical and operational points reported: - Voice: The district completed a transition from legacy POTS/hybrid service to full SIP and is rolling out a two‑phase extension plan. Phase 2 assigns five‑digit device extensions beginning with 7 (site + device); phase 3 will assign personal extensions to staff that follow them when they sign into phones on other campuses. - Network: The district upgraded site cabinets, UPS power, and switching to support a 20 Gbps transport; 28 switches have been replaced and 55 legacy switches remain on the replacement list tied to an E‑Rate project. - Wi‑Fi & devices: The board was told the district will install about 555 Wi‑Fi 6 access points (high density for middle and high schools) and is continuing legacy device migration; classroom panels and audio systems have been installed in nearly all classrooms (director cited roughly 990 installed units). - Cybersecurity & monitoring: The district has enforced multifactor authentication for administrative accounts, implemented URL‑ and malware‑filtering via a new firewall, deployed monitoring tools (described as content and drive monitoring for student accounts) and a student safety tool described as BART to flag concerning chats/emails for administrators. - Disaster recovery: The district moved to an immutable backup solution with cloud copies to reduce the risk that a ransomware incident could both encrypt live data and erase backups.

Board members asked about funding and timing; Sanchez said the work is financed with a mix of general fund, LCFF/LCAP supplemental concentration funds, and E‑Rate reimbursements (the director described E‑Rate as covering roughly 90 percent of eligible category 2 costs). Sanchez said the Wi‑Fi 6 project is an E‑Rate category 2 project on a multi‑year cycle and the district expects to finish significant pieces over the summer so schools reopen with the new Wi‑Fi in place.

No formal action on policy or procurement was taken at the meeting; the presentation was informational and staff said some itemized procurements and site cutovers will continue in coming weeks.

Sanchez closed by saying the technical work enabled the classroom features now in place and promised continued phased rollouts through the summer.