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Muskego‑Norway librarians present district library plan as technology staff outline cybersecurity and infrastructure work
Summary
District librarians described a learner‑centered library plan and Sora digital‑collection controls while technology staff reported device, network and cybersecurity statistics and planned infrastructure upgrades.
Emily Detmar and Jenny Weed, district librarians, presented a district library plan focused on learner‑centered literacy and collections and described how the district curates digital access for students. Technology staff summarized recent equipment installs, phone and network upgrades and cybersecurity monitoring.
Detmar said the library plan uses the national Future Ready Librarian framework to organize work around “learner‑centered literacy,” with the district proposal to the Educational Services (ESE) committee spelling out collection development and instructional supports. District libraries follow Administrative Guideline 25‑22a when acquiring print and digital materials, Detmar said, and students in third grade and up already have 24/7 access to digital books via Sora; the district is working to extend Sora access for kindergarten through second grade by the end of the school year.
The librarians described how physical collections are organized by genre and color‑coded so students have a consistent experience across elementary, middle and high schools, and they highlighted “passive programming” (makerspace-type activities, weekly featured activities, and age‑appropriate offerings at the elementary level) as a way to engage students outside formal instruction. The librarians also described curated online landing pages of databases for different class projects and regular digital‑citizenship lessons delivered during library time.
When asked about monitoring digital content, Detmar said Sora is configured by student grade band and librarians curate which titles each band can access. She said parents can use student credentials to view what a child has borrowed in Sora and that library staff control grade‑level access: “Sora knows what grade level that child is at,” Detmar said.
On technology, district staff (technology staff member identified as Brad in the meeting) summarized work completed after the district’s recent referendum: dozens of new computers and labs, nearly 50 flat‑panel displays, additional network switches and roughly 40 wireless access points to extend coverage, and a districtwide phone replacement. Brad said the district also finished a migration to an EVAC phone system and highlighted expected operating savings (amount not specified for verification in the meeting record).
Brad reported the IT help desk handled roughly 1,182 requests this year with an average response time of about 21 hours. He said the district recorded 46 cybersecurity “events” this year that were investigated and contained; none of the incidents rose to the level of a district outage. He attributed the district’s protection to layered defenses — staff education, multifactor authentication, endpoint detection and an enterprise firewall system — and provided firewall statistics attributed to the current monitoring window: roughly 99,000 blocked inbound attempts, about 2,600 VPN login attempts and over 1 million vulnerability probes in the cited period. Brad called education a target for cyber criminals and said the district will update its incident response plan this year, pursue an improved mass‑notification/communications platform, and start a multi‑year network infrastructure replacement cycle.
The librarians and technology staff asked the board for approval to forward the library plan to the ESE committee and for continued support of scheduled IT projects. No formal board action on the library plan occurred at the presentation; the technology report was an informational update.
Why it matters: library curation and the district’s approach to digital access affect what students can read and how parents can review materials; the technology investments and cybersecurity posture shape classroom reliability and the district’s exposure to online threats.
What’s next: the district said it will present the library plan to the ESE committee and continue phased Sora rollout for K–2. IT listed near‑term goals: an updated incident response plan, a new communications platform, and a switch/infrastructure replacement cycle.
