Petition calls for more E-Rate funding

The federal E-Rate program, which helps schools and libraries connect to the internet, should receive more funding so that more schools and libraries can serve not only students, but community members as well, E-Rate compliance firm Funds For Learning wrote in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission.

In an open letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, John Harrington, CEO of Funds For Learning, requests that the commission increase the available funding in the E-Rate program and invites E-Rate stakeholders and supporters to sign the online petition before it is delivered to the FCC in early 2012. In the letter, Harrington explains that schools and libraries, especially those in the nation’s poorer communities, rely on the E-Rate program as “the financial backbone that enables them to keep their sophisticated and expensive telecommunications networks up and running.”