Educators Plead for E-rate Update, Increased Funding
Education is becoming increasingly digital, and schools need upgraded broadband infrastructure to continue serving students effectively, educators said Wednesday at a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition event in Washington. On the first day of the federal government shutdown due to a budget impasse, educators from around the country agreed that the E-rate program needs substantially more money. The event’s main government speaker, Tom Power, deputy chief technology officer for telecommunications in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), did not attend.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
E-rate has been “one of the most successful programs in our lifetimes” in getting dollars to schools, said public policy consultant Jim Kohlenberger. But schools are now moving from a “capacity challenge” to a “capacity imperative,” said the former OSTP chief of staff. “You don’t need data to understand that we have a challenge.” Surveys indicate 80 percent of schools lack the speeds they need for digital learning, he said: “That’s as many as 40 million children being left behind."
There’s a growing consensus that fiber is needed, Kohlenberger said. Fiber is “future proof,” letting schools meet current goals while also being upgradable, he said. “You can just change out the electronics on the end of it and boost performance.” It can also help “dramatically” reduce the costs of delivery, which could help the E-rate program’s sustainability going forward, he said. “It’s the great future proof technology” that will let the U.S. invest not just in the next school year, he said, “but in the next generation."
Funding will need to increase, all speakers said. It’s “barely budged” from 15 years ago, said Jeff Campbell, director of technology policy at Cisco. Any corporation’s network costs from 15 years ago to today have “jumped enormously,” he said, and companies are willing to pay for that because of the “enormous benefits.” The distinction between Priority 1 and Priority 2 funding -- connections to the school, versus connections inside the school -- has to be eliminated, he said. “It was dumb 15 years ago; it is insane today. We have to get rid of this system. It makes no sense to pay for one part of the network and not the rest of the network."
A survey by the Consortium for School Networking found that rural schools are paying about six times as much per megabit as non-rural schools, said CEO Keith Krueger. Rural schools face a “dramatic challenge” the industry needs to address, he said. Fewer than 60 percent of classrooms nationwide have any wireless access at all, he said. “We have to come to a comprehensive solution, and E-rate really needs to modernize.”
The increase in the E-rate cap from $2.25 billion to $5 billion will only be enough to meet today’s demand, said Sheryl Abshire, chief technology officer at the Calcasieu Parish School System in Lake Charles, La. The government and educators need to think “strategically” about how the fund will grow, she said, “in such a way that we're not all meeting in Washington every two or three years” to figure out how to keep the program going. “The message is clear: We need help.”