Kentucky Dept of Education Selects Zayo to Elevate Educational Experiences

Zayo, a communications infrastructure provider has been selected by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) to spearhead the modernization and upgrades of Internet connectivity and cybersecurity infrastructure for nearly 1,700 KY K-12 facilities, including schools, district offices and area technology centers across the state.

This partnership marks a transformative leap in education technology, with Zayo Education—formerly Education Networks of America (ENA)—delivering the future-ready network infrastructure to advance KDE’s technology ecosystem and elevate educational experiences.

This strategic collaboration has enabled KDE to meet the national goal of 1 Mb/1000 kb of fibered Internet bandwidth per student. This ensures K-12 students and educators benefit from reliable, high-quality connectivity to enhance learning, improve operational efficiencies, and offer access to more online educational tools. The improved network infrastructure from Zayo Education also provides KDE facilities with enhanced cybersecurity and reporting capabilities to safeguard critical Internet services and enable districts with visibility and quick notification of any issues impacting the network. Proactively ensuring its Internet service is secure and capable allows KDE to maximize future state and federal funding opportunities, enabling the department to continue bridging educational gaps.

“Reliable and secure network infrastructure plays a vital role in the modern classroom,” said Gayle Nelson, VP of Zayo Education. “Our partnership with KDE provides the high-quality Internet access and security students and educators need in our digital age. By delivering modern, scalable infrastructure and solutions, Zayo Education is helping KDE enhance learning experiences, ensure network performance and security, and leverage funding opportunities to support future growth.”

Over the last nine months, Zayo Education supported KDE in seamlessly transitioning its Internet service from its previous provider of 30 years, ensuring uninterrupted school operations and the protection of student data throughout the process.

Facilities now benefiting from Zayo Education’s advanced solutions include:

The Kentucky Department of Education agency staff
KDE Internet hubs in every Kentucky K-12 school district, used by 171 Kentucky K-12 district offices, 1,500 Kentucky K-12 schools, and 51 area technology centers (ATCs)
The Kentucky School for the Deaf
The Kentucky School for the Blind

“Kentucky is unique in that no other state requires cloud-based computing or presses the use of the network like ours,” said David Couch, Chief Information Officer and Associate Commissioner of Education at the Kentucky Department of Education. “With Zayo Education (formerly ENA)’s proven track record in other states, we were confident in their ability to support our unique network needs and seamlessly transition our network operations. They have helped us increase bandwidth by 75%, which has been a game changer both in the quality of service we can deliver to our students and in standardizing cloud-based services for several critical technology functions across Kentucky’s nearly 1,500 schools.”

Zayo’s acquisition of ENA in 2022 played a key role in delivering the enhanced solutions required by KDE. With the acquisition, Zayo Education is now the largest independent provider of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) E-Rate program and connects over 19,000 K-12 schools (20% of all public schools) across the U.S. The combination of Zayo’s robust network infrastructure and ENA’s education expertise enables Zayo Education to uniquely serve K-12 organizations and deliver the future-ready solutions to support the next generation of students.