E-rate/Schools and Libraries Program

As of 2017, an estimated 6.5 million students nationwide attended schools that didn’t have the Internet bandwidth needed to support digital learning. More than 2,000 schools lacked fiber connections. Notably, 77% of those schools were in rural communities.  If there’s one message you should take away from my being here today, it’s that the Federal Communications Commission is committed to working with educators and state and local leaders across the country to close these connectivity gaps.

In this notice, the Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau announces that there is sufficient funding available to fully meet the Universal Service Administrative Company’s (USAC) estimated demand for category one and category two requests for E-Rate supported services for funding year 2018. 

The Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development is seeking applications to support regional economic development planning efforts in rural communities under the Rural Economic Development Innovation (REDI) initiative. This funding opportunity will be administered by the Rural Development Innovation Center, in partnership with the Rural BusinessCooperative Service. The agency is announcing up to $750,000 in competitive cooperative agreement funds in fiscal year (FY) 2018. Rural Development Agency may select one, multiple, or no award recipients.

After a series of errors associated with the Universal Service Administrative Company’s (USAC’s) roll-out of the ERate Productivity Center (EPC), the web-based account and application management portal for the E-Rate program, Pribilof School District (St. Paul Island, Alaska) filed its application for funding and its subsequent waiver request after the applicable deadlines.

It’s one of the cruelest ironies in education: today’s schools must build and maintain robust high-speed, fiber-optic internet connections. But the process involved in finding funds for these upgrades can feel like a laggy dial-up modem, slow to a crawl—when it’s not cutting out completely. For more than 20 years, the Federal Communications Commission has directed the multi-billion dollar E-rate program, which provides taxpayer-supported construction and service discounts that districts and libraries can use toward internet costs.

With too many students in too many places falling into the homework gap, we need to upgrade the E-Rate program by extending the school classroom to the school bus. This would ensure that school districts are reimbursed by the program when they add this technology to their transportation. To drive this change, proposals have been introduced in the Senate and House of Representatives. They deserve serious consideration.

A school district in South Carolina has done away with the much-loved snow days — requiring students to do classwork online. Officials with Anderson County School District 5 announced that the district has been chosen to “pilot the first eLearning program in the state of South Carolina,” meaning that when roads are too treacherous for travel, teachers will send assignments to the students’ school-supplied Chromebooks. The district calendar states that “inclement weather days will be eLearning days and will not be made up.”

Sens Tom Udall (D-NM) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) introduced a bill to put wireless internet on school buses in order to help students without broadband access at home get online to study and do homework.

[Editorial] Lt. Gov. Dan Forest (R-NC) hosted a made-for-a-campaign-commercial media event with Federal Communications Chairman Ajit Pai and a bevy of Republican state legislators at Graham High School in Alamance County to boast about North Carolina being the first state to connect every classroom to high-speed broadband. It is no small achievement. However, it’s not quite his to brag about. If Forest’s fellow Republicans had their way, there would be nothing to celebrate. In 2007 only one Republican, former state Sen.

On March 13, 2018, Sen Jon Tester (D-MT) and Gov Steve Bullock (D-MT) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to express concerns with FCC regulations that are causing significant delays on certain school broadband projects in rural states. "It is unacceptable for bureaucratic red tape to stand in the way of high-speed internet being delivered to rural classrooms. As such, we urge you to take immediate corrective actions," they wrote. On May 10, Chairman Pai responded by writing, "[T]here have been serious flaws in the administration of the E-Rate program.