Randy Riddle, Director of IT at NLRSD

Randy Riddle is the Director of Information Technology for the North Little Rock School District (NLRSD) in Arkansas, where he serves as the “digital architect” for a K-12 environment of roughly 7,500 students and 1,250 staff. 

In this role, he is responsible for ensuring that technology across the district is reliable, secure and almost invisible – acting as a bridge rather than a barrier to learning for both teachers and students.

Journey into education and IT

Randy’s path into education technology was far from ordinary. 

His first academic passion was chemistry – and he once told himself he would never work in public education. 

That all changed when he joined Conway School District, initially taking “a job that seemed like a good place to work” and staying for a decade as a computer technician. 

He then moved to North Little Rock as lead technician, then assistant administrator.

Now Director of IT, Randy has carved out an inspiring 13‑year career in a field he never planned to enter, but has since fully embraced.

​At the heart of Randy’s role – and at the heart of his approach – is a deep commitment to closing the digital divide in what he openly describes as one of Arkansas’ highest‑poverty districts, where around 98% of students qualify for free or reduced school meals.

He and his team run a one‑to‑one programme that issues each student the same Chromebook, allowing older students to take devices home – where they often double as the family computer – so that learning can continue beyond the classroom. 

For younger children, the district uses iPads and touchscreen Chromebooks to match technology to developmental needs, ensuring that access is genuinely usable, not just nominal. 

Alongside this, he works closely with curriculum leaders to standardise on tools such as Google Classroom, reducing friction as students move through grades.

Randy thrives on variety and pace. 

“I don’t like monotony a lot – I thrive in chaos, so education works well for me,” he says. No two days are alike, and Randy finds his best moments are human ones – “seeing the light bulb click”, as he calls it, for a teacher or student.

This is even the case now his role has shifted away from hands-on classroom support to more strategic work.

Enabling digital equity, security and AI

Although he knows he can’t fix every hardship for his students, for Randy, he ensures “that while they’re here, they have the access they need to learn”.

He says: “We try to be really passionate about making sure that digital equity is all‑inclusive for everyone and that no one is left behind from a technology standpoint. At the end of the day, we’re trying to make sure it’s a level playing field for them and that when they go home, we’ve done what we can for them from an IT perspective to make sure that they have the best chance of a bright future.”

As learning becomes increasingly online – particularly with the adoption of AI models – Randy has a firm focus on cybersecurity. With neighbouring school districts falling victim to attacks in recent years, Randy and his team are following NIST standards and new state‑level cybersecurity rubrics. He also insists that any vendor with student data signs a privacy agreement, or the district walks away, protecting students from long‑term harm such as identity theft.

​When it comes to AI, Randy strikes a balance between caution and opportunity. 

“Do we bring down the hammer and blanket‑ban it? Do we just let it run for a little bit, see how it goes?” he recalls, before the district set up an AI policy committee. 

It has blocked some tools such as ChatGPT over data‑use concerns but embraced Google’s Gemini and NotebookLM as part of its district-wide Google suite use under strict agreements, allowing teachers to use AI as a “thought partner” for lesson planning and students to build their own research spaces. 

“It’s not going to go away,” Randy says, “so we would be doing our students a disservice if we didn’t teach them how to use it responsibly and properly.”