District tech leaders outline $12.1M capital plan, introduce Securly classroom and home tools and a new monitoring service

Tech services staff told the Indian Prairie CUSD 204 Board of Education on Oct. 6 that the district has newly allocated $12.1 million in capital funds for multi-year technology refreshes and described recent changes to district filtering, monitoring and security.

Presenters said the district moved most wide-area network connections onto an Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology consortium—an E-rate arrangement—saving about $280,000 and enabling other investments. The district’s annual technology operating budget was described as approximately $9.4 million; tech staff said shifting capital dollars will smooth multi-year device and display replacements that otherwise cause large year-to-year budget swings.

On classroom software, tech leaders said the district replaced its Lightspeed filtering suite with Securly and is piloting Securly Classroom, a teacher-facing monitoring and management tool. A district presenter summarized Securly Classroom functions: teachers can push a URL to every student device, lock students to a short list of sites, message a student discreetly and, during an active class period, see student browser activity. "You can keep...really reducing the distractions," a tech presenter said, describing features such as push URLs and site locks. The district also plans to offer Securly Home to parents, with options to schedule offline time, receive activity reports and set device-level rules; staff said parents will receive welcome emails the week of Oct. 13 and informational flyers during parent-teacher conferences.

Tech staff also described a cloud-monitoring product (managed methods) that scans Google and Office 365 files for sensitive content such as Social Security numbers, student lists, or other restricted data and reports externally shared files. The team said managed methods discovered thousands of externally shared documents when it was turned on and that, as of Aug. 1, the system had indexed more than 10.5 million files and that Google Classroom activity during the start of school had produced roughly 122,000 posts.

Security upgrades installed this summer include new firewalls and a SIM/SOC (security information and event management plus a security operations center) service that consolidates logs from firewalls, switches and endpoints and provides 24/7 monitoring and response. Tech staff said the SIM/SOC allowed the district to retire three previous security products while gaining continuous monitoring; they described an alert that flagged a student account logging in from Aurora and Russia simultaneously and the SOC’s ability to block the account.

Staff described further infrastructure needs: replacement of the district storage area network (SAN) and older servers, and a network access control (NAC) system to prevent unauthorized devices from joining the LAN. Other projects identified for the near term include access-point licensing and interactive-display replacements at secondary schools and early childhood sites.

Students and board members raised questions about the Securly rollout. An unnamed student speaker said the monitoring prompted some high-school students to bring personal laptops to school to avoid school filtering, potentially undermining classroom control: "I've seen the opposite actually happen when implementing it at the high school...students end up bringing their personal computer to school." Tech staff replied that Securly’s category ratings differ from Lightspeed and that staff are addressing blocked educational sites on request; a tech presenter said the district blocks roughly 18 categories (primarily adult and malicious categories) and will work with Securly to resolve miscategorized sites. Students and board members also asked whether teachers can view student activity outside class hours; tech staff said Securly Classroom works only during defined school/class periods and that Internet-filter logs exist separately and are not monitored live at night except by the SOC for security events.

Tech staff additionally reviewed an updated device rollout schedule intended to level annual costs (a recurring device refresh budget closer to $2.2–$2.5 million per year by staggering grade-level replacements) and said approximately 100 Securly Classroom sessions run concurrently during the day in elementary and middle grades. Staff said they would report back in spring on Securly Home usage and on the Google migration, which the district has begun with volunteer users and plans to pilot building-wide during a Thanksgiving break conversion.

No formal board action or vote on the tech items was recorded during the Oct. 6 presentation.