End the digital divide. Our children are being left behind.

Over the course of my three decades with Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS), I thought I had seen it all, but I never could have foreseen the challenge of educating amid a global pandemic. From Day One, we knew our biggest challenge would be getting students access to lessons without physical access to schools. PGCPS is home to more than 136,500 students; 82,000 receive free and reduced-price meals — an indication of limited resources at home that may extend to a child’s Internet access. For these students and families, many of whom struggle to make ends meet in a stable economy, distance learning online is not an option. And without access, students fall behind. It is not a complex equation. The novel coronavirus exposed, at a national scale, the equality gap between students with Internet access and those without.

To bridge this digital divide, we need federal intervention. In the stimulus package signed into law, Congress failed to provide direct funding for distance learning. Future stimulus legislation must include funding for expanded broadband access, particularly with an enhanced E-Rate program for broadband access to schools and libraries. Removing systematic barriers to education is a national emergency every day, but now the urgency is as great as ever before. In these trying times, we are already seeing what happens when we don’t answer the call when an alarm is sounded — or wait too long to act.

[Monica Goldson is chief executive of Prince George’s County Public Schools]