$5.25 billion needed for student broadband and devices

The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition believes the “Emergency Educational Connections Act of 2020” (H.R. 6563), introduced by Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), is extremely important to help students engage in online learning from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The legislation will provide $2 billion in emergency supplemental funding for the Federal Communications Commission’s E-rate program to fund broadband connections and devices for the millions of students that do not have broadband at home. However, we are concerned this level of funding will not be sufficient to address the home broadband need. We believe $5.25 billion is needed. We strongly encourage Congress to include sufficient funding for student broadband in the next Coronavirus relief legislation. We further suggest that Congress should add additional language to strengthen the funding legislation before its enactment to ensure that the E-rate program is able to meet school needs even after the end of the current COVID-19 crisis:

• Congress should explicitly authorize the FCC to continue to allow the E-rate program to fund devices, network equipment, broadband at home and network security;
• Congress should explicitly permit schools and libraries to use E-rate funding to extend their broadband services from their school and library buildings to the surrounding homes;
• Congress should require E-rate funding to address the need for filtering to ensure that students using school-provided equipment are not able to access indecent content;
• Congress should ensure that the E-rate program remains technology-neutral to allow schools and libraries to make the best technological decisions that suit their needs.