St. Martin Parish built a resilient K-12 network with fewer APs using RUCKUS®
St. Martin Parish School District serves approximately 7,500 students and 985 staff. With RUCKUS® and SoluVista, the district modernized its network to support one-to-one learning, reliable online testing, and significant growth in connected devices and internet traffic.
Industry:
Primary (K-12) Education
Products:
RUCKUS One®
RUCKUS ICX® Switches
RUCKUS® Wi-Fi Access Points
Daily connectivity issues cannot exist in a modern school district. When every student relies on a device and every classroom depends on digital tools, the network becomes the backbone of learning. For St. Martin Parish School District, the challenge was not just getting connected. It was building a network that could support rapid growth in devices, handle high-stakes testing without disruption, and make the most of limited education funding. Working with SoluVista and RUCKUS®, the district modernized its infrastructure with RUCKUS access points, RUCKUS ICX® switches, dual data centers, metro fiber connectivity, and RUCKUS One® cloud management.
The network now supports approximately 7,500 students, 985 staff, 495 active access points, and weekly internet usage that has grown from about 3 TB to nearly 19 TB. The impact has been especially clear during online testing. Before the pandemic, the district had roughly 4,000 devices on Wi-Fi. Today, it supports approximately 12,000 Chromebooks, plus laptops, while maintaining stable performance during peak testing windows. By using one access point for every two classrooms in many areas, St. Martin Parish reduced infrastructure requirements, stretched E-rate funding further, and simplified long-term maintenance. The result is a resilient, efficient K-12 network that no longer requires constant troubleshooting. It simply works.
The Challenge: Scaling digital learning without overbuilding the network
St. Martin Parish School District needed to prepare for a significant increase in digital learning while making efficient use of limited funding. The district was expanding to one-to-one student devices, increasing wireless usage across classrooms and outdoor areas, and supporting critical online testing periods where downtime was not an option. At the same time, leadership wanted to avoid overbuilding the network with unnecessary hardware, cabling, and complexity. The challenge was to deliver a reliable, scalable infrastructure that could support more users, more devices, and more traffic while using E-rate funding thoughtfully and minimizing operational strain.
The Solution: A resilient RUCKUS network designed for growth and simpler management
Working with SoluVista and RUCKUS®, St. Martin Parish deployed a district-wide network built on RUCKUS access points, RUCKUS ICX® switching, and RUCKUS One® cloud management. The design included indoor and outdoor wireless coverage, school-level aggregation, dual data centers, metro fiber connectivity, and high-availability networking to improve reliability and simplify management. RUCKUS One provides centralized visibility and proactive alerts that can reach IT staff on their phones when issues arise. The district recently renewed RUCKUS One for an additional five years, extending its use beyond the initial five-year term. Access points and switches were preconfigured and tested before installation, enabling the district to complete school-by-school upgrades over planned weekend windows.
“We’re proud that we were able to lower costs by installing RUCKUS access points in every other room instead of every room. Our network delivered the coverage and performance we needed with fewer access points, which meant less equipment to purchase and install and more room in our budget.”
Todd Meche, Network Manager, St. Martin Parish
Key results: More devices, more traffic, and more reliability with fewer access points
- Maintained stable network performance during end-of-year testing, with essentially no network incidents reported over the last two years.
- Scaled weekly internet usage from about 3 TB to nearly 19 TB without disruption during regular school hours.
- Expanded from roughly 4,000 Wi-Fi devices before the pandemic to approximately 12,000 Chromebooks, plus laptops, for one-to-one learning.
- Reduced infrastructure requirements by supporting many classrooms with fewer access points, helping maximize E-rate funding and simplify maintenance.
SoluVista is a Baton Rouge based IT solutions provider that designs, installs, and supports technology for businesses, government agencies, and schools. Its services include networking and security, cloud services, unified communications, servers, storage, and virtualization. The company works with organizations to identify their needs, build a solution, and maintain it after installation.
