Hilda Legg

As a former teacher, education and its long-reaching benefits are dear to my heart. While joining Deputy Under Secretary Donald “DJ” LaVoy at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia (KY) to announce over $55.3 million in ReConnect funding, I thought of the impact this funding would have on the education of our fellow Kentuckians. While it is true that rural communities stand to benefit from broadband expansion in a number of ways, its ability to help close the very real digital divide between rural and urban America is a shining promise to the future for all Americans.

In eastern Kentucky, the collapse of the coal industry, long a major employer, created severe economic hardship. Though a successor to coal hasn’t yet emerged, government agencies and economic development organizations at all levels are aware that the region needs to participate more fully in the digital economy. Efforts are underway to retrain miners and other displaced workers as computer programmers and homebased call center agents.