How Rural Schools Paid for Students' Home Internet to Transform Learning

After obtaining funds to send devices home to 1,240 students in the rural Alabama Piedmont City School District, school officials found they needed a way for students to use the Internet at home.

Superintendent Matt Akin applied for a “Learning on the Go” grant, part of the E-rate program that helps subsidize the cost of Internet for schools and libraries. The district used the money to contract with a vendor that partnered with the city to build a wireless network on existing fiber optic cables that weren’t being used. Then, the school district used E-rate funds to lease use of the network. But, as so often happens with pilot programs, E-rate didn’t renew the program the following year, so the district had to shoulder the costs of maintaining the network. It costs the district about $10,000 per month to lease the network and pay for mobile hot spots given to students who live outside the range of the city network. That’s 3 percent of the district’s budget. It sounds expensive, but Akin says it was the single-biggest factor in transitioning the district toward new ways of teaching and learning. Blending online courses with what can be offered in person has also given students who have fallen behind a real chance at catching up and graduating. The district’s total commitment to this experiment is paying off. Not only are teachers using a variety of tools to change how they approach instruction, but online learning has also expanded the course offerings.