r/k12sysadmin

HT to u/Amazing_Falcon for getting me thinking about this. Responses to their post were unanimous in favor of SSO, but my PowerSchool consultant says that a lot of her districts have implemented Clever logins (for staff). Does anyone have any experience with this that they can comment on? Thanks all!

If you are using PowerSchool platform either what do you use in your organization. Are you using the old fashion Username/Password or MFA in the PowerSchool platform? If you could explain which method you use and your reason that would be helpful. Right now we are on the old fashion method.

Thanks in advance

I was thinking about moving over to Cyberfox for our organization. To be able to have autoelevate and privileged access management for our network. Thinking about a way to help secure things. Would like to see some thoughts and ideas regarding do this? Is it recommended or is there something better?

Thanks in advance.

We have about 300ish out of date or broken Chromebooks. I was wondering if and how people here do mass deprovisioning of Chromebooks. Really don't want to enter them one by one.

We have a new marketing guru that has asked me to unblock LinkedIn for all faculty and staff. Currently, we block all social media sites and allow access if their job role requires it. I have thoughts as to why this is a very bad idea. I want to support marketing, but I'm curious what others think.

I have seen some notice regarding PowerSchool changing up the apps used. Found Clever app is possibly not approved and have to move to SFTP. Wondering if Claslink would be better for this? Looking for ideas and thoughts. I have heard some use both at same time. What would the reason for certain platforms?

Thanks in advance.

I know certain sectors or IT are all in on AI for things like vibe coding and analysis of things like business reports or data analytics and then there are sectors like educational IT where your district may be more progressive and have things like gimini open to staff or completely shut down and won't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

That said, if you are able to use AI in your job, what do you use it for? What have you made? I've made a few things on my own like an agent that will check my Google admin app requests to make sure they are COPA and FERPA compliant or an offline AI chatbot that staff can talk to to handle tickets and give suggestions based off a FAQ page and if it can't solve the problem it will make me a ticket. Nothing I have made requires student data.

We were going to use Google Forms and QR codes to input student ID numbers into a spreadsheet, then tally it up and award them points for good behavior. Unfortunately, our admins want it to be seamless and not even require the teachers to click "Submit". They just want it all to happen instantaneously behind the scenes. Is there a good website, doesn't even necessarily have to be free but cheap? Thanks.

I seem to be stuck with a couple of iPads, so far, and Apple Configurator. They were previously managed in Jamf and when I went to wipe them they failed to download the configuration like there was a network issue (which there isn't because I've been doing hundreds of iPads).

These two were pointed to our Jamf server and Jamf School had their enrollment profiles assigned. I unassigned the profiles, unassigned them from the server in ASM...put everything back, nothing helped.

Through a bunch of troubleshooting, I finally removed them from Apple to manually add them back for a 30 day provisioning to see if that would help. Of course, now they just constantly show as released.

I can set them up manually and install a voluntary Jamf School management profile. That all works.

What the heck am I missing?

(I know, it's not Q3 yet).

So we're looking at web filters due to expanded requirements from admin. Apparently an advertisement of a scantily clad woman means we need better filtering. Sigh.

I'm looking for your recommendations on the best filtering platform out there. I don't need it for off campus devices. I strongly prefer something that's locally controlled/admin'd

We run pfSense and Squid (squid is just doing authentication, so no SSL bumping currently).

An inline network content filter would be best. Mix of Windows and Chromebook here (and some iPads I guess).

Searching the sub I see recommendations for: Linewize LightSpeed Deledao GoGuardian securly Blocksi iBoss Cisco Umbrella

Fortigate/Meraki are ruled out. While we use Impero, Content Keeper is not a fit for us.

What's the correct option for us?

Greetings all,

I wanted to do a quick sanity check. Evidently we may be able to get some funds to revamp our camera systems and our superintendent seems deadset on Verkada. While I have some concerns over their sales tactics I can't deny that the demo seems pretty smooth. One thing I noticed however is that we have to pay for hardware upfront and they're claiming that their cameras are ONVIF compliant which means if we ditch them late we'd be able to use the cameras. That seems to go against things others have said in that their cameras are bricked if you leave Verkada. Are they ONVIF compliant now?

Some others I'm hoping to look into:

Building out our Video Insight server more, need to sit down with a support rep to finish rolling out some stuff for proper apples to apples comparison.

Seen some people switch to Avigilion which I was under the impression was just as expensive as Verkada.

Coram.ai, know very little about them.

Uniquiti seems to be the up and coming provider for smaller places like our school district.

Curious if ya'll have some insights.

The question has come up as to why we charge the full replacement cost for a Chromebook when a student damages a device, even though the replacement provided is typically a device of similar age or condition.

I’m curious how other districts handle this. When students damage Chromebooks, do you generally charge the full cost of a new device, or is there a prorated model based on the age or remaining life of the device?

I’m also interested in how districts handle partial repairs—are those billed at full cost of parts/labor, or is there typically any adjustment based on device age or condition?

Education pricing:

Neo > $599
Air > $1199
MBP and Studio saw bigger jumps

Does this now place the Neo out of reach for student devices? We have had Airs for staff and now that is nearly twice the cost from a year ago.

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Has anyone found a way to remove mcafee from machines. Their removal tool now requires a captcha and can't be run silently.

I manage IT for a small school with fewer than 200 users. Historically we've used SonicWall firewalls and they've been pretty solid for us. Our environment consists of:

• UniFi switches and APs
• Windows laptops for staff
• Chromebooks and a handful of iPads for students
• VoIP phones

My typical network setup is pretty simple:

• Staff VLAN
• Student VLAN
• VoIP VLAN

I currently use SonicWall's content filtering and remote management through NSM, which I like because I can manage the firewall remotely without needing to VPN into the site.

I'm looking at alternatives in a similar price range to a SonicWall TZ380 with a 3-year subscription (03-SSC-6961), which comes out to around $1,700.

Requirements:

• Good web/content filtering for a K-12 environment
• Remote cloud management (similar to NSM, no VPN required)
• Easy remote administration since I manage the school offsite
• Comparable pricing

For those managing small schools or similar environments, what would you recommend?