PURVIS, MS. — Mississippi’s Lamar County School District has selected edtech company Lightspeed Systems to provide device filtering and monitoring services for the district’s 19 schools. Lightspeed Filter™ has been implemented to protect and monitor more than 7,600 student Chromebooks across the district, blocking dangerous web content while also monitoring student activity to help district staff identify suspicious behavior and safety threats.

Lightspeed has filtered K-12 schools for almost 20 years and has provided content filtering services for Lamar County School District’s devices since 2013. By implementing Lightspeed Filter, a multi-OS cloud filtering and monitoring software solution, the district will benefit from features such as:

• Lightspeed Alert™ — receive immediate alerts when students enter or browse suspicious and troubling terms/content, allowing staff to intervene or escalate
• Simple SSL filtering — filter SSL sites like Google and YouTube without having to use proxies, PAC files or certificates
• Parent Report Generator — upload a simple CSV file of parent email addresses to automate the delivery of student device activity reports to their parents’ inboxes
• Lockouts — lock students out of internet access if they attempt to access too many blocked sites in succession
• Smart Play — the game-changing YouTube management feature that allows students to access tens of millions of educational videos (and none of the bad stuff)

“Lightspeed Filter is a turning point in the way we protect our students from the dangers of the Internet,” Lamar County School District Director of Technology Ross Randall said. “With the deployment of Lightspeed Filter, I can now allow my students to access useful content that I would have otherwise blocked due to the inability to granularly filter out the bad. I am confident that my students are in a much safer environment, and with the ability to flag terms I feel we can offer data that can be used in behavioral interventions.”

“After working with the district for more than five years, we have seen how devoted Ross and the rest of the staff are to giving students an advanced, 20th-century learning experience,” Lightspeed Systems President and CEO Brian Thomas said. “By implementing Lightspeed Filter, the district is not only safe from inappropriate and malicious online content, it will also be able to help students who need intervention.”

About Lightspeed Systems
Lightspeed Systems partners with schools to make learning safe, mobile and easily managed. Partnered with 6,500 districts in the United States and 25,000 schools around the world, Lightspeed Systems offers integrated solutions for smarter K-12 school networks: Lightspeed Filter, Lightspeed Mobile Device Management™, Lightspeed Classroom Management™, and Lightspeed Analytics™. To learn more, visit https://www.lightspeedsystems.com.

About Lamar County School District
The mission of the Lamar County School’s Technology Department is to support and encourage the integration and successful application of educational technology into the areas of curriculum, instruction, and administration. Located in Lamar County, Mississippi, the district serves more than 10,700 students in 19 elementary, middle, and high schools across Baxterville, Purvis, Hattiesburg, Lumberton, and Sumrall. To learn more, visit https://www.lamarcountyschools.org.