Suburban Chicago school district leans into learning with AI-driven Wi-Fi

Like schools everywhere, District 230 relied heavily on video, cloud applications, and mobile devices as it pivoted to remote learning at the start of the pandemic. But as students returned to in-person classrooms—and with more devices to support experiential learning—the school’s older wireless access points couldn’t keep pace with heightened expectations.

With the IT team spending more time supporting classroom connectivity, it was time for a Wi-Fi refresh.

“We wanted to future-proof our wireless network with a solution that would meet the needs of our high-tech environment for the next five to seven years,” says John Connolly, CTO of Consolidated High School District 230. 

With Juniper, Wi-Fi is the invisible digital foundation for enriched learning experiences. 

“When we don’t hear about the wireless from the staff and teachers, it’s a good day,” says Marce Gonzalez, IT services operations manager. “And we don’t hear about the wireless anymore.”

AI-driven networking has freed up the IT team focus on strategic ways to use technology to further improve the quality of learning and student success. “With Juniper wireless and Mist AI, we spend less time being reactive and more time being proactive,” says Caruso.

The IT team was pleasantly surprised with the success of automated RF optimization. Juniper’s AI-driven radio resource management automates channel and power assignment, continuously learning and optimizing the RF environment, while taking Wi-Fi and external sources of interference into account.

“We were hugely skeptical of WLAN vendor radio resource management promises based on our experience,” says Caruso. “But with Juniper, we have yet to manually set a channel or power on an AP. It actually works.”