Children and Media

Mayor London Breed announced a partnership between the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and national nonprofit organizations EducationSuperHighway and the 1Million Project Foundation to provide connectivity support for thousands of students in San Francisco who lack home internet access, including the deployment of up to 25 WiFi “SuperSpots.” As part of the new Digital Bridge project, the SuperSpots will be installed in locations to serve students from underserved communities who need to participate in distance learning due to COVID-19 and related school closures.

As the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads, the nation’s K-12 schools and colleges have been forced to weigh health recommendations against the needs of students, many of whom are caught in the digital divide separating those who have Internet access and those who do not. About 15% of US households with school-age children lack high-speed Internet access, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2015 Census Bureau data.

In San Antonio, schools, under a state directive, now must provide “remote instruction” and many will start March 30. Although several districts are offering curbside pickup of paper packets, lessons largely will be given online — further exacerbating the digital divide in a city with one of the nation’s biggest income gaps. Even in better times, students who don’t have ready access to computers and the internet face greater challenges completing homework and college applications.

From Boeing to Verizon Communications, scores of US companies and industries are furiously lobbying Congress to add measures to the Trump administration’s massive stimulus package to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, some of which address issues that long predate the outbreak.

For all the talk of online learning during shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic, many U.S. public school students will find that the work they do while at home is actually optional. It won’t be graded and it won’t count. Some public schools are calling online work “enrichment,” not part of the curriculum, because they can’t guarantee that all students will have access to it. Students without the internet or home computers can’t do it, and special-needs students may require accommodations to complete it. As a result, millions of schoolchildren risk missing weeks of school.

Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Gary Peters (D-MI), and Jon Tester (D-MT) urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to take action to ensure that students have access to internet so that they can continue learning while schools are closed and to create a consumer-friendly web portal with additional school resources in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 

The School District of Philadelphia will not allow teachers to do “remote instruction” with students while schools are closed during the coronavirus outbreak. Because the district cannot ensure equal access to technology among students, it’s barring individual schools from providing graded virtual instruction. Superintendent William Hite said teachers cannot require students to do work remotely or grade them on that work.

Just as our public health system appears unable to cope with the spread of the coronavirus, our residential broadband, video conferencing platforms and VPNs are about to face unprecedented strain. That strain will have serious consequences, not just for the performance of our broadband networks but also for student access to education and the security of corporate data and networks. The performance issues might be worse in rural areas, where internet service is already less reliable than it is in big cities.

For all of China’s economic advancements in recent decades, the rudiments of connected life — capable smartphones, reliable internet — remain out of reach for large segments of the population.