New York City Public Schools: Ensuring access for all with Microsoft Intune

This was a monumental effort. “We initiated the largest rollout of the most LTE-enabled devices in the shortest amount of time—as far as I'm aware—in history,” says Alexander Horwatt, Executive Director of the Technology Innovation team for NYC PS. “We needed to get a device into every New York City student’s hand and—given the pandemic—the speed at which we needed to deliver these devices was critical to student success. All these things converged at one time.” This endeavor involved not only distributing devices but also efficiently managing them, providing filtered internet access, deploying, patching, and updating various applications.

The decision was also influenced by Microsoft Intune’s compatibility with multiple device platforms, enhancing its appeal.

“Microsoft Intune ticked all of our boxes,” says Horwatt. “As it was free to us, we made the executive decision to adopt Microsoft Intune as our Modern Device Management platform. The platform was new to us, as were the capabilities, but overall, the platform supported our need to manage users, devices, and policies centrally.”

After adopting Intune, the Server Operations and Technology Innovation teams began their deployment planning. Yet, within a week or so, everything changed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing them to compress an intended six-month implementation timeline into mere days. "Suddenly we're pivoting to 100% remote learning," Horwatt recalls. “Where it wasn’t just a question of devices, it was also a question of connection: ensuring every student could tap into a rich well of learning, regardless of their unique circumstances.” This swift shift required a rapid deployment of devices, managing filtered internet access, and updating applications for continuous learning.

Intune streamlined management securely and transparently, minimizing the impact on teaching and learning and improving the overall educational experience.

An unprecedented effort to keep learning alive

NYC PS had to figure out how to keep students connected to their peers and teachers to maintain continuity of learning. After evaluating the marketplace, they decided to distribute tablet devices to students with filtered internet access, and deployment of 67 learning applications. Later, NYC PS began distributing Chromebooks with filtered internet access to students as well.

A dedicated IT team was assembled to handle logistics and keep an eye on supply chain issues to distribute hundreds of thousands of pre-configured devices using Microsoft Intune, Apple School Manager, and Windows Autopilot: a cloud-based provisioning technology that works with Intune to set up new Windows devices after they are sent to educators and students.

What’s more, an assembly line and distribution process was created, including unboxing, setup of iPads and Chromebooks, Intune registration, and final delivery to students' homes, all while sharing daily logistics updates with stakeholders from the IT department and city officials, all the way up to the mayor.

Serving the underserved

Assuming New York City students had access to the internet, much less a device, was not a given. Schools distributed existing devices but recognized that not all students had Wi-Fi access. For instance, New York City has a significant number of families experiencing homelessness or living in temporary housing. Initially, these families in temporary accommodations lacked basic Wi-Fi access.

“We really took that to heart and worked with other city agencies to identify the number of students in each facility,” says Horwatt. “We prioritized getting Wi-Fi or LTE-enabled devices into the hands of each of those students first to ensure they had proper access to receive an education remotely.”

NYC PS ordered 550,000 LTE iPads and 200,000 LTE-enabled Chromebooks, with another 50,000 Windows devices and 40,000 Apple devices purchased later that first year for use in classrooms. In this way, each and every student could have the right learning device loaded with the right software in school and at home, with the connectivity needed to make learning feasible anytime, anywhere.

In collaboration with NYC PS, the Microsoft Intune product team ensured the successful deployment by helping to manage and monitor the devices as they were activated for educator and student use. Artis Clemons, Senior Director of Endpoint Strategy at NYC PS, praised the partnership: “Working with the Microsoft Intune product team for mission critical support went as smoothly as it could have possibly gone. The team was extremely responsive, providing us daily updates—sometimes hourly updates—on our development efforts.”

Horwatt concurs, “It goes back to solid partnerships and transparency among partners and, because we had that with the Intune team, they were able to see when they were having issues and remediate if the ball was in their court,” he adds. “Whatever the case was, having that solid partnership and that solid cross functional team was huge for us!”

Active visibility and improved efficiency

The Technology Innovation team enhanced their systems with Intune allowing for better insights into device status and usage for better operational efficiency. 

“Having that active visibility and active management of our fleet of endpoints lets us know what's working and what's not working, what's secure and what's not secure,” Horwatt explains. “It allows us to take action immediately and—in most cases—in an automated way. We are in a much better position from both a security perspective and from a risk perspective than we were before adopting Intune.”

Intune's capability of deploying software and modern packages across the entire fleet of devices throughout the city is also significant. This eliminates the need for CDs or USB sticks, making it easier to deploy new applications. Intune also eliminated the need to maintain, manage, and distribute images so they could shift their environment to providing users and technicians in the field with basic tools.

“Every minute you spend waiting for a device to boot up or waiting for something on the device to work is teaching time that's lost,” says Horwatt. “Our goal from a device strategy perspective is to minimize that technology impact wherever possible by having Intune on board and allowing us to manage everything silently and transparently. It really does provide that single pane of glass to truly understand—from a technical standpoint—all of the hundreds of thousands of assets that we had in play.”

Looking to the future

Intune has been a game-changer, helping to modernize IT operations and provide basic tools for users and technicians to manage their devices.

Going forward, NYC PS wants to enhance security and improve reporting, and to take better advantage of the role-based access control for better management delegation and process automation. “NYC PS is working to make a transition to digital assessments,” Clemons says. “Having Microsoft Intune manage a whole fleet of devices distributed throughout the city has made that a lot easier. Now we can support any projects that are deploying any application throughout the city without any hiccups. Microsoft Intune helped us to modernize the way we run IT operations. And there's more to come.”

Microsoft Intune was the key to keeping learning alive for New York City’s students throughout the start of the pandemic. And though the world may have stopped for a bit, learning and collaboration with peers didn’t. Now a million students have access to the invaluable education they need to forge a brighter future.