Why Small Districts Need MSPs More Than Ever
Everyone talks about the big districts. The majors. The ones with full IT teams, multi million dollar refresh cycles, and long planning windows. But in our recent conversation with E-Rate experts Jim Kerr and Mia Kerr from E-Rate Profit Works, something far more important surfaced.
The real opportunity is not the large school systems. It is the five thousand student and smaller districts that make up the majority of K 12 in the United States. These are the districts without dedicated networking staff, without in house expertise, and without the time or capacity to manage multi vendor systems. They are the districts that need MSPs the most. And right now, most MSPs are overlooking them. In this edition:
-
Why small districts are the largest underserved segment in education
-
What these districts actually need from MSPs
-
Why Managed Internal Broadband Services fits their needs
-
How MSPs can build a high margin business by serving this group
The Most Overlooked Market in K-12
Jim Kerr shared a fact that brought this whole idea to light. The average user of Managed Internal Broadband Services is not a major urban district. It is a five thousand student district or smaller. These districts operate with minimal in house IT resources. Many have no full time network engineers at all.
They are responsible for hundreds of classrooms, thousands of devices, and tight compliance requirements, yet they are the least equipped to run modern infrastructure. In many cases their situation looks like this:
-
One generalist IT staff member managing everything
-
Limited time to troubleshoot or optimize
-
No staging rooms or configuration processes
-
Zero ability to manage complex vendor licensing
-
No internal resources to run cybersecurity or segmentation
And yet these same districts often have meaningful E-Rate budgets and funding levels. A district of this size can have more than one million dollars of eligible infrastructure spend over a five year cycle.
This is a significant market segment, and it is massively underserved.
Why Many MSPs Have Not Entered This Space
Despite the need, MSP participation has been slow. Many MSPs still think of E-Rate as a hardware procurement game. Others focus only on the biggest districts, leaving smaller systems behind. And many providers have not yet built a true network as a service model that removes capital outlay and matches E Rate structures.
As Jim explained, very few MSPs offer a complete managed service for K 12. Instead, providers offer:
-
Capital purchase plus support
-
Licensing scattered across multiple vendors
-
Fragmented help desk structures
-
Box slinging without lifecycle ownership
This does not solve the operational pain these districts live with every day.
The unmet need is not more hardware. The unmet need is a predictable service that handles design, deployment, configuration, ongoing management, and support in one model.
MIBS Was Designed for This Exact Gap
Managed Internal Broadband Services was created to help districts that cannot run networks themselves. It allows MSPs to retain ownership of hardware, deliver everything as a service, and provide the district with an annual cost that is eligible for E-Rate reimbursement.
The program is working. Adoption is growing at ten to fifteen percent year over year. Yet MSP participation is still limited. Which means two things:
- The need is real.
- The competition is low.
A five thousand student district often has:
-
Two hundred fifty access points
-
Dozens of switches
-
Hundreds of staff devices
-
Thousands of student devices
-
All needing segmentation, onboarding, patching, and uptime
This is not small work. It is substantial recurring revenue for an MSP with the right platform and operational model.
Final Word
The biggest opportunity in K-12 is not the biggest district. It is the five thousand student and smaller systems that need help and cannot find it. They have the funding. They have the need. They lack the staff.
MSPs who bring a true network as a service model to this market will win long term recurring revenue, strong margins, and loyal customers who finally get the support they have been missing.
The market is there. The need is clear. The opportunity is wide open.
Thanks for joining us for this edition of The Shasta Summit. See you next week!