California District Rolls Out 802.11n Wireless

• By David Nagel
• 07/22/09

California's Moorpark Unified School District has upgraded to a new 802.11n system in an effort to support students and teachers needing access to digital resources.

The deployment used hardware from Xirrus, a WiFi provider that supplies equipment and serices to K-12 and post-secondary institutions.

“To be able to take these teachers to any location in the district at any given time and be able to do staff development with their laptops they’ve gotten and be able to access their network resources seamlessly: That in and of itself was huge for me," said Julie Judd, director of information and education technology services and support at Moorpark USD, in prepared remarks released via streaming video this week. "And now we'll be able to do that not only with teachers but with students."

She said the she was not confident that the district's legacy system could accomplish this but now expects it to "become a reality in short order."

Moorpark Unified School District serves about 7,200 students in two high schools, two middle schools, and six elementary schools, as well as preschool programs and a high school based out of Moorpark College that offers concurrent high school and college enrollment.