Spring Cleaning for School Networks

How to Identify Legacy Tools That Need Replacing

How can IT leaders evaluate what tools should be retired now versus patched through for another year?

Hehr says a good place to start is by identifying anything nearing end of life or end of support, noting that districts should not have hardware on the network that isn’t receiving active security updates. From there, planning should prioritize the most critical systems first. “Your core — your firewall, your cybersecurity platform — needs to be completely up to date,” with at least a year of support remaining.

If that’s not the case, he recommends budgeting for replacement, applying patches where possible or re-evaluating options. Schools may have a bit more flexibility at the edge, but he emphasizes that IT leaders should always “start at the things you need to keep the most secure, and then work your way out.”

The warning signs that something should be retired rather than patched for another year vary depending on the system, but IT leaders should watch closely for how tools are performing. “The response that you're getting from that tool is your No. 1 set of symptoms, whether it’s slow or it’s giving you false feedback or you’re seeing it miss on some things,” Hehr adds.

At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of staying informed beyond just your own environment. Districts need to monitor not only their vendor but also the broader market to ensure their tools can keep pace. “If you’re a Cisco shop, you need to be paying attention to what HP is doing, what Juniper is doing,” he says, so you know your solution is still meeting evolving demands.

Security stakes are especially high in K–12, where sensitive student data is a prime target. “K–12 data is the highest, most targeted data set in the industry, so what are you using to protect it?” Hehr says. That makes it critical to weigh the potential impact of a breach alongside technical performance. Insurance requirements can also be a deciding factor since many policies won’t cover systems within a year of end of life.

Ultimately, he says, the decision to replace versus extend comes down to a combination of signals: What your hardware is telling you, what your insurance requires and what’s happening across the industry.

“Every person in that seat has to try to stay on top of as much of it as they can or be willing to bring in an expert to help,” he says.

Don’t Overlook Endpoints in Spring IT Planning

Spring is also when IT departments need to re-evaluate the security of their devices. “We tend to go to the big flashy things, like a new firewall or a new core infrastructure, but you also need to be thinking about your endpoints,” he says. “What does your refresh cycle look like?”

No matter what operating system your district is using, Hehr says you should be willing to be OS- or product-agnostic. “You need to consider what tool or product best fits, so that you’re meeting your educational needs in a safe and secure fashion in every possible entry point to your network,” he says.

Consolidating K–12 Technology Tools Without Adding Risk

As K–12 schools navigate a shifting financial landscape, IT leaders are taking a closer look at potentially overlapping tools so they can streamline and consolidate resources.

Hehr recommends starting with a systematic assessment: “Do a feature breakdown,” he says, where you map out what each tool does, and look for overlap in a Venn diagram. Once that’s clear, schools can identify gaps and ask whether those missing features are essential.

“Does this tool bring something to the table that this other one doesn’t?” Hehr says.

“I did a spreadsheet for everything that we had, whether it was a firewall, a filter or an instructional software tool,” Hehr says. “If it was a feature that I had to have because it was required by state law, it got weighted as more valuable.”

In the case of cybersecurity tools, Hehr says districts often end up layering tools over time to fill gaps and meet new requirements. “This tool does this thing, but then we brought in another tool to cover this gap that this tool didn't have at that time, and then we brought in a third tool to cover up a new gap because there was a new state law here,” he says. “So, you’re paying for three things, and they all do three different things, but they overlap a lot.”

Hehr says in many cases, there could be a single cybersecurity solution that can replace the three separate tools, consolidating their capabilities into one.

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Using Data To Decide Which K–12 Tools To Keep or Cut

Data can play a major role in deciding which systems to keep, replace or consolidate, Hehr says, and the first red flag is often support tickets.

“One way you know something is starting to get old is when you see a marked increase in tickets,” he says. That’s the signal that you need to either dig in to fix the problem or consider a replacement.

Usage metrics are another critical data point. “If I’m not legally required to have that feature, and nobody uses it, and it’s just nice to have, it’s gone,” Hehr says. “We have to focus on the things that are legally required to keep us safe and secure.”

Balancing IT Changes With Classroom Disruption

When districts consider retiring or replacing tools, the potential disruption to teachers, students and administrators should rank “right up there” with cost savings, Hehr says.

Tech leaders, he argued, must remember that “the customers that we serve every day as an IT department, as a school, are those teachers and those students, and we need to operate from that perspective.”

Because of that, he said, IT leaders “need to have an amazing relationship with the curriculum department, so that technology decisions are made in alignment, whether it’s a new AI tool or a new way to do something.”

When a change is mandated — because of new legislation or insurance requirements, for instance — Hehr’s advice is to plan far ahead. “If we have to do it, we make the plan well in advance, so that we can teach people in time so that when we hit the ground running and the change is implemented, it’s as seamless as possible.”

Unless a potential change hits that level of importance, “the time and effort required for that transition should be counted as a valuable metric to pay attention to,” he says.