Scituate tech team outlines cybersecurity upgrades, grants and summer projects

Director of Educational Technology Jackie Fongiello and her team briefed the School Committee on May 5 on cybersecurity work, network upgrades, device refreshes and summer projects intended to improve reliability and classroom access.

Fongiello said the tech department secured a $10,000 Maya grant with town support to strengthen cybersecurity and also received a state grant to provide Know Before cybersecurity training for staff at no cost to the district. The department has implemented a Sophos MDR (managed detection and response) service to provide 24/7 threat monitoring.

Fongiello summarized recent and ongoing work: upgrading more than 400 laptops to Windows 11 and Office builds; installing about 30 new network switches across five schools; increasing backbone fiber capacity to 10 gigabits; replacing or upgrading roughly 97 wireless access points; and repairing roughly 728 devices so far this year. The team reported handling 2,638 tech support requests this school year.

Planned summer projects include a Wi‑Fi coverage and segmentation project (separate guest, student and staff networks), continued projector and panel upgrades at the high school (13 interactive Newline panels), a district firewall replacement, shipment and deployment of additional Chromebooks for the one‑to‑one program (including 5th and 9th grade assignments), and the rollout of a combined tech‑ticketing and inventory system.

Fongiello said the district piloted a streaming educational library (Swank) at the secondary level and expects to expand access to elementary teachers. She also described work to catalog and rationalize district subscriptions and vendor agreements so the small four‑person team can better track services and licensing.

On staff and roles: Fongiello introduced the team — an IT operations coordinator (Chris), a tech integration specialist for grades 6–12 (Tara Gaudet), and a technology support technician (Sue) — and said the group supports about 2,800 students and 400 staff districtwide.

Quotes and context: Fongiello said, “For a very small team, but a very mighty one, I would say our support is probably our best attribute,” and acknowledged the town’s help in securing the Maya grant: “We were very grateful, to the town for supporting us in that receiving of the grant.”

Why it matters: the upgrades and added monitoring aim to reduce downtime, respond to increasing cybersecurity threats, and provide classroom tools (interactive panels, Chromebooks) needed for instruction. Committee members asked about splitting communications and IT roles in future staffing and welcomed the district’s cyber incident planning and inventory work.

Lede section: Jackie Fongiello, director of educational technology, updated the committee on grants, cybersecurity monitoring, network upgrades and a district inventory/ticketing rollout.

Nut graf section: The department used town and state grants to fund cybersecurity training and monitoring, upgraded core infrastructure and prepared a slate of summer projects — including interactive panels and a firewall replacement — intended to improve classroom reliability and security.

Ending: Fongiello asked the committee to support development of a cyber incident response plan and to continue funding predictable refresh cycles; staff said they will roll out the ticketing/inventory system over the summer and publish policies and quick‑reference resources for teachers.