East Syracuse Minoa Central School District

IT was tasked with manually reviewing all safety alerts

As the primary IT contact, Denys was often burdened with handling safety-related alerts from their monitoring system, even outside of his working hours.

Digital threat monitoring became costly to maintain

While the district recognized the growing need for a proactive monitoring solution to address student online risks, their previous monitoring solution had become too costly to maintain.

Maximizing value by consolidating EdTech

Linewize offered both filtering and monitoring solutions at a price comparable to ESM’s previous filtering-only solution, making it a highly attractive and budget-friendly option.

This allowed Denys to manage both systems from a single, integrated interface, significantly reducing configuration time and administrative effort.

The outcome: Reduced IT workload, real-time student safety, and system reliability

Reliable system performance with minimal maintenance

Denys says one of the biggest advantages of the Linewize system is its simplicity and reliability.

“As soon as we configured everything and made all the rules, I barely made any changes. Sometimes we have requests to add or change something, but overall it’s just working. That’s the beauty for us—it’s just working.”

Kieran O’Connor agrees. “I’m in charge of IT, but I’ve also got other departments. I’m not in the day-to-day, so if I don’t hear about it, that’s good. That means it’s working.”

Streamlined IT workload 

Since implementing Linewize Filter, Denys says the IT team sees far fewer requests for changes. When requests do arise, they’re simpler and faster to address.

Safety alerts go to appropriate staff members, rather than IT

Thanks to Linewize Monitor, the district successfully shifted the responsibility for handling student safety alerts from IT to their educational staff and faculty.

“Now, I’m not responsible. We have principals, we have the deputy superintendent, all handling it. I’m still cc’d to the notifications, but it’s more just to see that the system is functioning,” says Denys.

“My philosophy is that receiving safety alerts is not an IT function—it needs to be an educator function,” says Kieran. “They know who the students are and what they’re working on. We create the tool and pass on the messaging to them.”

He says this has helped protect IT resource hours to focus on key tech initiatives for the district.

Dedicated human moderation provides context for alerts

With Linewize Monitor, ESM’s school staff are now alerted of potential student issues in real time, and can take action quickly.

The context provided by Linewize’s team of human moderators helps the district’s response teams plan timely interventions.

Kieran says that Linewize’s 24/7 human moderators also help to reduce false positives, so staff are responding only to serious alerts. “We don’t get a million of them, but when we get them, they are positives,” he notes.

“I know the principals appreciate having that knowledge, and that reporting mechanism happening. Before, kids could be doing whatever, and they wouldn’t necessarily know what’s going on.”

The district is prepared to adapt to evolving state guidelines

When the state of New York implemented a cell phone ban for K-12 schools, ESM’s IT department was prepared for a potential increase in student Chromebook usage for communication and other activities.

With Linewize Monitor in place, the district felt well-equipped to detect any potential issues as students shifted some of their personal online activities to school-issued devices.

Denys says they’ve seen other districts in the surrounding community now adopting Linewize, giving ESM confidence that they are part of a growing network utilizing a reliable and effective digital safety solution.