Midway ISD says 9,500 iPads deployed; district cites stronger cybersecurity, 20Gbps internet and $850K saved by early bond purchases

Midway ISD’s technology director reported the district now has "just over 9,500 iPads deployed to staff and students," low device repair rates and an active plan to double internet bandwidth, during the board's monthly meeting.

The presenter told trustees that the district’s E‑rate discount is about 60 percent (based on roughly 37 percent free and reduced‑price lunch), that category 2 federal requests remain pending, and that internet access bids will let the district increase bandwidth for less monthly cost starting July 1.

On cybersecurity, the technology presentation outlined a layered approach—access control, 24/7 surveillance, web filtering, endpoint behavior detection, immutable backups and mandatory multifactor authentication for staff email. The district uses a student‑monitoring platform, Bark, which the presenter said has analyzed more than 7 million student activities and generated 755 alerts forwarded to campus administrators and counselors.

The presenter also described recent procurement choices tied to the bond: the district purchased servers and storage earlier in the year and estimated it saved "about 850" and "about 200,000" on compute and storage respectively (presenter aggregated those savings at roughly $850,000). Staff completed mission‑critical server migrations over the weekend and said they will stand up a disaster‑recovery site after addressing cooling and power needs.

Trustees raised vendor risk in light of recent outside incidents; the presenter summarized a recent Canvas platform ransomware incident by an actor group and said Powerschool had previously been scrutinized after a separate data incident but the district runs a different instance and was unaffected.

What happens next: administration plans to present category 2 E‑rate approvals in upcoming consent agendas if federal approvals arrive and to continue DR‑site deployments tied to bond purchases.