This Rural IL School District Has Been Asking for Wi-Fi for Years. Now It’s Finally Getting It.

Since the March shutdown of schools across Illinois, teachers at one rural southwestern district have been stuffing 800 manila envelopes with learning packets and mailing them to students’ homes because many families in the area don’t have computers or high-speed internet. Trico District 176’s remote learning challenges were highlighted recently in a story that exposed a digital divide across Illinois as schools shifted to remote learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic. State agencies later released a map touting publicly accessible Wi-Fi hot spots at about 250 locations; none are in the 250 square miles that make up the Trico district.

That’s about to change. A local internet provider is installing Wi-Fi service to connect families to the district network. An anonymous donor pledged to donate a dozen hot spots. And a school district in Chicago’s suburbs said it would ship about 250 used Chromebooks to Trico when the computers are replaced after this school year. The Trico superintendent, Larry Lovel, said he’s been taken aback by the generosity of each donation.