What Kind of Infrastructure Will K-12 Schools Need for AI?
What Kind of Infrastructure Will K-12 Schools Need for AI?
https://www.govtech.com/education/k-12/what-kind-of-infrastructure-will-k-12-schools-need-for-ai
Publish Date: 2026-05-11 19:02:00
Source Domain: www.govtech.com
In the years after schools started connecting to the Internet in the 1990s, they faced major bandwidth issues, as the demand for connectivity outpaced the infrastructure that supported it. When it comes to the vast implementation of artificial intelligence in education today, infrastructure challenges are different. Experts say schools are not yet seeing catastrophic network failures or dramatic bandwidth spikes directly attributed to the technology.
Instead, they observe that the emergence of AI is accelerating existing technology pressures districts have been grappling with for years: aging devices, an increasing dependency on cloud services, sophisticated cybersecurity threats and chronic staffing shortages. According to some experts, the central question for district leaders is not whether a network can run AI, but how well it can support districtwide, everyday use at scale over the next several years.
WHAT COUNTS AS AI INFRASTRUCTURE?
In 2025, the nonprofit Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) released a report stating that only 16 percent of K-12 schools at that point had reported being fully ready for AI with necessary tools and systems, and 61 percent had dirty and/or siloed data not ready to be operationalized by AI.
CoSN board member Tom Ryan, who is also a senior fellow of the Center for Digital Education and co-founder of the K-12 Strategic Technology Advisory Group, said AI readiness is about the foundational systems, policies, protocols and facilities that schools need to function effectively. These include infrastructure governance, future bandwidth forecasting and procurement protections.
Within the school building, Ryan said AI infrastructure will mean wireless connectivity with the capacity to handle “microbursts” — sudden online disruptions that occur when thousands of devices simultaneously log in or connect to cloud systems.
“We’ve got to provide bandwidth at a…
