It’s a Numbers Game! Why K12 School Systems Need Identity Governance and Administration

School systems face significant challenges managing online accounts, and it all comes down to the sheer number of people needing access. It's not just students, teachers, and staff; it can include substitutes, aides, contractors, police officers, and even parents who need to check grades or use school websites. When you add it up, a school district can easily have tens or hundreds of thousands of user accounts. This makes tracking who has access to what a huge headache. 

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) is a framework of policies, procedures, and technologies that helps organizations solve the headache of managing and protecting user accounts and digital resources. It ensures that the right people can access the right information and tools when they need them while keeping everything secure.

How the Numbers Add Up

Picture a district with around 10,000 students plus another 1,500 adults working in the buildings. Add in all the parents/guardians – at least one for each student. You're easily at 20,000 to 25,000 users, or identities, in a district with lots of parent/guardian involvement.

The last district I worked for had 65,000 students across 67 locations. Our total number of identities could reach 150,000-200,000, and we were considered a medium-sized district. Our transportation department alone had over 700 users, including staff, bus drivers, subs, mechanics, and administrators.

Readers might wonder, 'Millions of users use individual websites and services all the time; what's the big deal?' Here's the catch: these aren't just your regular website users who save settings or credit card info. Those users can create their accounts, make account changes, and more. We're talking about internal users: people who need specific, often super-detailed, permissions to access sensitive stuff. People who have relationships within systems that must be maintained. Identities that can not be changed without permission and verification. Managing that kind of access for tens of thousands of people? That's a whole other level of tricky.

But wait, there’s more.

Constant Change

Schools have another identity headache with user accounts, and it's all about change. In most businesses, an employee's account is created, permissions granted, and few changes are needed for the account's lifetime. In schools, it can be very different.

First, students are registering and leaving throughout the school year. While some districts enjoy a fairly stable population of users, others can see tremendous changes due to their demographics, industry, or geographical characteristics. I worked for a district near an Army post, and families were constantly being transferred in and out due to job changes. In another district, population growth was a factor that caused rapid school construction. In my last district, we planned to open a new school every year with no end in sight. Even if a district's student population is trending down, there can still be a large churn of students, which means many user account changes to administer.

Student accounts are not the only concern. Staff and teacher turnover is also huge. Teachers often switch schools and districts to grow their careers and find a perfect fit. In a medium-sized district, a hundred new hires and a hundred retirements in one summer would not be unusual. These account changes can be overwhelming.

Last, students have to matriculate. Student accounts need different access to applications, security settings, and new group memberships when they advance grade levels. Relationships with teachers also change. Each year, the entire student population needs changes to their accounts to work smoothly. Back when I started in this field in the mid-90s, we deleted all the student accounts at the end of the year and recreated them with new info for the next year because it was the only way to ensure everyone was in the right grade. We no longer have to go through such extremes, but the amount of user account change management is still significant.

Connected Users Require Governance

The need for systems that can automate, report, monitor, and create identities is clear. School systems run massive, constantly shifting identity management operations. It's not just about setting up a few accounts; it's about handling a vast, dynamic population with specific access needs. Given the sheer volume of users, the constant flow of students and staff, and the yearly grade-level shuffle, it's a level of complexity that most businesses don't even come close to. There's a lot more happening behind the scenes in our schools than most people realize, especially when it comes to keeping everyone connected. It all starts with implementing identity governance and administration. 

In my next blog post, we’ll discuss how IGA can help IT leaders with another thorny challenge: Managing user data that comes from and goes to multiple places.