A blueprint for modern school IT: KIPP NYC creates a unified, collaborative environment for faculty and staff with K-12 Google Workspace migration

Embarking on a journey of digital transformation 

KIPP NYC, a leading network of public charter schools, is dedicated to preparing students with the skills and confidence to succeed in college, career, and beyond. To deliver on that mission, faculty and staff depend on technology that delivers seamless collaboration and efficient communication. While they have still been able to deliver the high-quality education and opportunities families expect, over time, the organization found themselves split between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, a setup that created confusion, duplicated work, and slowed productivity. It also limited the IT team’s ability to deliver innovative solutions to pressing business challenges. To unify their systems and better support educators and students, KIPP NYC embarked on a full K-12 Google Workspace migration for the faculty and staff and worked with SADA, An Insight company, to manage the migration and help users adopt the tools. The move not only simplified operations and cut costs but also created a more connected and effective environment for their entire educational community.

Business challenge

Consolidating, automating, and innovating IT in an academic environment

KIPP NYC was facing a significant challenge: a complex, hybrid IT environment. The organization was using Microsoft 365 for their faculty and staff email, calendar contacts, and user authentication, while their students were working almost exclusively in Google Workspace. This created a redundant system where faculty and staff had to manage both a Microsoft 365 account and a Google Workspace account. This configuration negatively impacted productivity and collaboration, as faculty and staff had to switch between the two environments. They needed a plan to resolve this redundancy. 

“When I joined KIPP NYC in 2024, we developed a three-phase digital transformation strategy to deal with our dual productivity and collaboration environments: consolidate, automate, innovate,” says Aric Dershem, CIO at KIPP NYC. “That started our digital transformation journey. This became low-hanging fruit for us to extract ourselves from redundant systems with redundant functionality.”

The existing infrastructure not only affected faculty and staff efficiency but also how KIPP NYC’s IT team managed the platforms. Limited control over password resets and reliance on on-premises domain controllers restricted their agility. KIPP NYC wanted to simplify their technology portfolio, reduce overlapping applications, and move toward a cloud-first, serverless future. The ultimate goal was to become device-agnostic, letting students, faculty, and staff freely collaborate regardless of their location or the devices they use.

Solution

KIPP NYC decided that a full migration to Google Workspace was the clear path forward for their collaborative learning environment. They sought a solution provider to help with the migration, knowing they needed expert guidance to get it right. They engaged SADA, winner of the 2025 Google Cloud Global Partner of the Year Award for Google Workspace, for a comprehensive solution that went beyond a simple data transfer. The SADA Professional Services team offered a complete package, including:

• Project management: SADA gave KIPP NYC a dedicated project manager who helped them track tasks, stay on schedule, and meet specific timelines. 
• Technical expertise: A SADA technical lead guided the KIPP NYC team through the detailed and extensive Workspace Admin console setup. They went setting by setting, identifying best practices and configuring the environment for a seamless transition. 
• Change management: This was a critical component of the project. The SADA Change Management team worked with KIPP NYC to develop a robust plan for user adoption. This included creating a dedicated resource site, offering voluntary virtual training sessions, and holding office hours to answer user questions.

Employing a phased approach to migration

SADA employed a phased approach to the migration, beginning with an early adopter group of 80 volunteer users. This phase allowed the team to test configurations and gather feedback before the global migration. KIPP NYC also identified a group of internal Google Champions from this initial phase, giving them T-shirts and a “train the trainer” program for on-site, hands-on support on go-live day. SADA also helped KIPP NYC tackle other key challenges, including:

• Legacy cleanup: The migration was a chance to spring clean their digital environment. KIPP NYC consolidated multiple legacy domains into a single primary domain, creating aliases to ensure no communication was lost. 
• Data management: SADA assisted with implementing a data retention policy, migrating just the last seven years of data, and using Google Vault to simplify e-discovery and data management. 
• Directory synchronization: Google Cloud Directory Sync was used to synchronize Active Directory accounts with Google Workspace accounts, a crucial step in preparing the organization to phase out their on-premises Active Directory servers.

Impact

By working with SADA on their Google Workspace migration, KIPP NYC hit their business objectives and got measurable results. Just two weeks after the go-live, a user survey showed 86% of staff and faculty were satisfied with the change to Google Workspace, and 98% of users were happy with the communications leading up to the migration, a testament to SADA’s collaborative change management efforts. 

Quantifiable benefits

• Cost savings: KIPP NYC achieved a net 15% reduction in IT spend. Migrating from Okta to Google Single Sign-on (SSO) saves $80,000 per year, and switching from Zoom to Google Meet saves an additional $50,000 per year.
• Increased efficiency: By moving to a single platform, KIPP NYC’s IT team can now automate many routine tasks, like password resets, which were previously manual and required a VPN connection. This frees the team to focus on more strategic work.
• Future-ready infrastructure: The organization is now set for a cloud-based and serverless future. “I now use a Chromebook exclusively, which demonstrates our shift in mindset and new device-agnostic capabilities,” says Dershem. “A broken device can now be replaced in minutes by simply logging into a new Chromebook, eliminating the need for backups and reinstallations.”
• Consolidating users and data: With the full migration to Google Workspace, KIPP NYC now has all 1,598 of their faculty and staff users on one platform, eliminating the need to switch environments. The move also consolidated 8.66TB of KIPP NYC data on Google Drive, creating a single source of truth for IT, legal, and other departments.

Qualitative improvements

• Better collaboration: Staff and faculty now have a more dynamic work environment. They are able to use features like smart chips in documents and create meeting notes directly in Google Calendar for tighter integration and greater efficiency.
• Model migration experience: The collaboration with SADA made people feel supported and prepared for the migration. “One employee described this project as one of the best orchestrated changes they had experienced, serving as a model for what effective change management should look like,” says Dershem.   
• Trust and confidence: The smooth transition boosted internal trust in IT. For example, the ability to manage data retention and e-discovery with Google Vault, without relying on third parties, gives the legal team a high degree of confidence in their ability to search for and access documents that they need. 

Future outlook

With the foundational migration complete, KIPP NYC is looking ahead to new opportunities for innovation in collaborative learning. Now, they are exploring how to roll out Gemini to the faculty and staff. This move positions the organization to continue their digital transformation journey, knowing they have a reliable, unified, and flexible environment to support KIPP NYC’s mission of collaborative learning and provide STEM and college-prep educational opportunities to students across New York City.