State, Local Officials Seek to Fill Distance Learning Gaps
Giving laptops and hot spots to students who lack good internet won’t solve distance learning problems exacerbated by COVID-19, state and local officials said Monday. The California Senate Education Committee and the Special Committee on Pandemic Emergency Response jointly held a hearing Monday about online learning gaps. Earlier in the day at the virtual Mountain Connect conference, Chattanooga public and private officials said they’re using municipal broadband to provide free fiber internet to students in low-income households.
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“Parts of my district have less than 55% broadband connectivity and millions of Californians have little to no broadband access in their homes,” said Pandemic Special Committee Chair Lena Gonzalez (D) in a statement before the California Senate hearing. “Simply providing Wi-Fi hot spots and computers to our youth is not enough during this pandemic.” The senator’s broadband bill failed in August (see 2008310034). Education Committee Chair Connie Leyva (D) said it’s “clear that we must continue to address the ongoing technology gaps in our state, since all students -- regardless of their household income or where they may live -- deserve reliable digital access and robust learning opportunities.”
Leyva worries about “loss of learning and the likely widening of the opportunity gap," she said at the livestreamed California Senate hearing. "It is critical that every student in California has access to quality instruction and a safe learning environment, whether they are learning virtually or in person.” The livestreamed hearing continued after our deadline, with scheduled witnesses including California Public Utilities Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves, California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond (D) and California Cable and Telecommunications Association President Carolyn McIntyre.
In Tennessee, Hamilton County Schools (HCS) is rolling out free 100 Mbps symmetrical internet with no data caps to 17,000 households that have 28,500 students eligible for the federal school lunch program, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke (D) and other officials told Mountain Connect. Berke said he gets "frustrated" when people see what his community is doing on internet access, "sound defeated ... and say that it can't happen elsewhere."
HCS Ed Connect has connected 5,000 households, with 8,000 more already in progress, said Benwood Foundation Program Officer Lori Quillen. The public sector committed $5.5 million of the $8.2 million project; the private sector raised $2.4 million and is working on getting the rest, she said. “It’s absolutely going to be transformational,” said HCS Superintendent Bryan Johnson.
The program is meant to last longer than the pandemic, at least 10 years, said David Wade, chief operating officer of municipal broadband provider EPB. “I don't see any reason why it will ever stop.” Tennessee law prevented EPB from selling a below-cost product, so it had to fund the distance learning service through a public-private partnership, said Wade. One ongoing challenge is overcoming reluctance of multidwelling units that have exclusivity agreements with other providers, the COO said. However, “if you get to the right person, and you explain the impact on this community, they’re pretty quick to reverse course.”
In New Mexico, students got Chromebooks at the Santa Fe Indian School. “Too many of them were paperweights in the end” due to the lack of connectivity, said the school’s chief technology officer, Kimball Sekaquaptewa, on FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel’s podcast Monday. Last school year, many students typed research papers on phones because their Google laptops lacked internet, she said. Some parents drove kids off tribal lands to get Wi-Fi at McDonald’s or Starbucks, but a tribal leadership rule that only two people could be in one car meant some parents had to take their kids one at a time, she said. “It's not acceptable.”