Clover schools outline strengthened device security, pilot student-monitoring software

Matt Hoffman, Clover School District's executive director of technology, told the board the district is shifting from rule-based web filters and signature-driven virus scans to AI-driven, behavior-based monitoring and is piloting several student-monitoring products that also flag potential mental-health risks.

Hoffman framed the change as one of tools, not teachers, quoting Bill Gates: “Technology is just a tool in terms of getting kids working together and motivating them. The teacher is the most important,” then adding the district is focusing on how devices and software can support instruction while keeping students safe.

The district currently uses the state-funded Cisco Umbrella web filter for broad protection, Hoffman said, but is testing more granular agents that run on individual devices. Those agents can continue to filter content off campus and reinstall themselves if students remove them. Hoffman said pilots have been set up with multiple vendors that the State Department of Education has listed as eligible for funding: Linewize, LightSpeed (LightSpeed Alert), GoGuardian, Gaggle and Securely.

Hoffman said the new systems use machine learning to spot anomalous device or user behavior — for example, unusual file activity or unexpected patterns of email — and to flag content that may indicate self-harm, access to illegal substances, or weapons. He described email-phishing tests for staff and behavior-based antivirus detection that looks for atypical actions on a device rather than relying only on a list of known threats.

Hoffman said the district is running a pilot group that includes district leaders (Hoffman named district staff participants during the meeting) to verify that alerts are accurate enough to support intervention and to design how reporting would reach school counselors or administrators. "We have a certain pilot group involving myself, Doctor Hopkins, Mister Ruth, and a couple other district office folk," he said.

When asked whether the protections operate off-campus, Hoffman said the district's agents run on student devices and can provide “best-effort” filtering at home, but they cannot control a family's home network. He added that if a home network has a more restrictive filter it can take precedence.

Hoffman noted federal and state privacy and safety laws and guidance that shape district choices, naming COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) and CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) as requirements tied to federal funding, and referencing state guidance on security monitoring software issued in a Jan. 7, 2025 memo. He said the district's web filter and firewall already use AI and machine-learning techniques and that the new tools would add behavioral and curricular context to filtering (for example, allowing anatomy images for a high-school AP class while blocking the same content at other times).

Board members did not object to the pilot framework and thanked Hoffman for briefing the public on the district's approach to keeping students safe online.