Monroe School District Resolves 95 Phishing Threats in Eight Weeks with Tartan

About Monroe School District

Monroe School District serves about 5,600 FTE students across nine schools in Monroe, Washington. The district runs on Google Workspace, with more than 1,200 staff mailboxes connected to Tartan.

Jesse Crowther, Director of Technology Services, leads the district's technology team alongside Network Administrator Carl Velez.

Challenge: Manual Cleanup and No Easy Way to Report

Monroe had no phishing training program in place and no simple way for staff to flag a suspicious email. When a phishing campaign hit a large number of inboxes, the IT team had to find the message and purge it by hand. Tools like KnowBe4 had been evaluated over the years but were always priced beyond what the district could budget.

"A lack of effective training on phishing attacks and a limited ability to report suspicious emails."

Asked how that felt, Jesse answered in one word.

"Vulnerable."

Solution: A Report Button Backed by Automated Response

Monroe found Tartan through a recommendation from a peer district. About two weeks after its first demo, the district had signed on. Onboarding took a single 30-minute call, during which the team connected Google Workspace, synced staff from their organizational units, and pushed the Tartan report button to every staff Gmail inbox.

Every email staff report goes to Tartan's Threat Manager. There, AI analysis scores the risk, summarizes the message, and groups every copy of the same email. Monroe set up an automation rule so a high-risk report is moved to spam for every recipient, without anyone on the IT team needing to step in.

"Their automated phishing threat mitigation system and phishing simulation training program has provided a wonderful solution to these issues we were facing. Also an amazing price point."

Results: Faster Response, Less Manual Work

Monroe staff reported 97 suspicious emails in their first eight weeks with Tartan, and Tartan's AI flagged 75 of them as malicious or suspicious.

• Threats Removed Without IT Stepping In: Tartan's automation moved 26 reported emails to spam on its own, in a median of 13 minutes from the first staff report.
• One Report Protects Everyone: When a malicious document-share email reached 25 staff mailboxes, two reports were enough for Tartan to pull it from all of them automatically.
• Invoice Fraud Caught Early: Staff reported 23 invoice and accounts-payable lures, the kind of payment fraud that targets district business offices.
• Threats from Trusted Senders: Nine malicious emails came from compromised accounts at eight other school districts. These messages often get past traditional filters because they come from real, trusted education domains.

"Peace of mind that we have an effective solution mitigating the target phishing campaigns targeting us."

What It's Been Like Working with Tartan

From the first demo through onboarding, Monroe's team found Tartan quick to respond and easy to work with.

"Very good customer service and responsiveness."

"We've been looking for a nice turnkey solution like this for a while that's reasonably priced."

Why Tartan Works for Monroe

• AI risk scores and summaries that show at a glance why a reported email is a threat
• Automated phishing mitigation that removes reported threats from every inbox
• A one-click report button in Gmail for every staff member
• K-12-specific phishing simulations and video training in the same platform
• Pricing that fits a public school district budget

Advice for Other Districts

"Reach out to them and book a demo, you won't regret it."

Final Thoughts

"I get better sleep :-)"

Jesse Crowther, Director of Technology Services, Monroe School District