District IT director outlines device inventory, BYOD risks and plans for AI access

Tim Gardner, director of IT for Kingman Unified School District, told the board the district completed a summer inventory of devices and is close to a 1:1 device-to-student ratio at many sites but noted wide variation by campus.

Gardner said the district uses federal- and state-related requirements — specifically Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) — to set filtering and privacy rules that allow the district to claim E-rate discounts. "So whenever we have one of these big projects, say the project's $100,000, we're only paying 10% of that," Gardner said, explaining the financial benefit of compliance.

The IT director described how the district distinguishes general education Chromebooks from higher-capacity desktops and laptops used in CTE (career and technical education) labs. He said device counts are taken from an August 25 student roster and a recent hardware inventory. Outliers included Little Explorers (about 39% devices to students) and the online learning campus (about 84%), while some sites have many more devices than students because of lab equipment.

Gardner explained the district's BYOD (bring-your-own-device) process: student or staff devices must meet security requirements, receive a certificate when they join the campus network and be subject to the district’s filtering policies. "Currently, the only ones that would are the staff ones," he said, adding that a separate, more restricted network could be created for student devices if the board chose to allow student BYOD access.

He warned that allowing student BYOD would increase the IT workload and raise security risks. "If any device on there got affected, then any other device on BYOD would also be vulnerable, but the rest of our network would be safe" if the BYOD network is properly segmented, Gardner said. He said failure to enforce device updates or antivirus on personal devices could jeopardize student and staff data.

Gardner also described how the district evaluates third-party online services for COPPA/CIPA/FERPA compliance: a cybersecurity administrator reviews vendor privacy policies and provides recommendations to curriculum leadership. He described possible responses: deny access, permit access, or adjust filtering.

On implementation and projects, Gardner said the district is replacing staff devices on a six-year life cycle (two schools this year and more in subsequent years); each replacement device costs about $950 with peripherals. He said intercom/bell system replacements and a camera system overhaul (migrating to a single camera platform and adding 21 cameras at Black Mountain) are underway or planned.

Gardner said staff who want AI access must submit an AI ethics questionnaire and that about 100 staff had requested AI access so far; student AI access has not been implemented but meetings with teachers and students were being planned.

The board asked about device allocation for larger classes, device reuse and data sanitization. Gardner said devices deemed obsolete are wiped and physically disabled (he described drilling the drive) before being declared surplus for auction or reassigned as student devices if usable.

Why it matters: the district’s decisions on BYOD, device refresh cadence, filtering and vendor vetting affect classroom access, cybersecurity risk and the district’s ability to capture E-rate reimbursements that lower technology costs.

Questions remain about whether the board wishes to authorize student BYOD, how to resource ongoing device vetting and whether to accelerate the refresh schedule to meet CTE and classroom needs.