Education technology

CENIC’s current last-mile efforts for K-12 are funded through the Broadband Infrastructure Grant (BIG) program, which was created in 2019 by Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and the California State Legislature to identify and implement fiber-based broadband solutions for K-12 schools lacking broadband connectivity. The BIG program emerged from CENIC’s success in supporting the Broadband Infrastructure Improvement Grant (BIIG) project.

The Federal Communications Commission is committing over $244 million in Emergency Connectivity Fund program support, helping to close the Homework Gap. The funding supports applications from the program’s third filing window which ran from April 28, 2022 until May 13, 2022, and will provide support in the upcoming 2022-2023 school year for 259 schools, 24 libraries, and 1 consortium across the country, including for students in California, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, New York, and Virginia.

While the pandemic presented obstacles for many students during the 2020-21 school year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)’s nationwide survey of public K-12 teachers showed that teachers with certain vulnerable student populations were more likely to have students who faced significant obstacles to learning and an increased risk of falling behind academically. Teachers reported that students encountered obstacles to learning including difficulty in getting support, a lack of appropriate workspaces, and a lack of tools for learning.

The Federal Communications Commission has received requests for $2,814,736,532 in the third application filing window of the Emergency Connectivity Fund program to fund 5,120,453 connected devices and 4,285,794 broadband connections. Applications will be prioritized to fund schools and libraries with the greatest need first, with a preference for schools and libraries located in rural areas.

When ed-tech leaders from 21 states met with lawmakers to discuss 2022 policy priorities at EdTech Advocacy Day in Washington (DC), they coalesced around the idea of modernizing federal E-rate funding for new expenses. The May 12 event brought together officials from the US Department of Education, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington and FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks.

Located in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, Dos Palos (CA) is halfway between San Jose and Fresno. It’s a remote community, which created challenges for the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District (DPOL) when it needed to implement distance learning plans during the pandemic. Paoze Lee, the district’s technology systems director, said it was obvious that the district could provide wireless and broadband coverage only to about 50 percent of its students via commercial wireless operators. “As we tried to bridge the digital divide, we wanted to fill in the gaps,” Lee says.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina M. Khan announced that an open meeting of the Commission will be held virtually on Thursday, May 19, 2022. The following items will be on the tentative agenda:

Benton applauds Chairwoman Rosenworcel and this critical effort to support a continuum of connectivity for America's schoolchildren. As far back as 2016, approximately 3 percent of the schools had begun to offer Wi-Fi on school buses, and nearly 4 percent were planning to do so in the near future. The reasoning is clear: school buses can be an extension of the school and facilitate online study. The FCC should seize this opportunity to turn school buses into rolling study halls.

For more than two decades, E-Rate has provided vital support to help connect schools and libraries to high-speed, modern communications all across the country. It got its start as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Over 25 million children take the bus to school every day. In rural areas that ride can be long. It can easily be an hour to school and an hour to return home at the end of the day.

When Covid-19 began to sweep across the country in March 2020, schools in every state closed their doors. Remote instruction effectively became a national policy for the rest of that spring. A few months later, however, school districts began to make different decisions about whether to reopen. Across much of the South and the Great Plains as well as some pockets of the Northeast, schools resumed in-person classes in the fall of 2020. Across much of the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, school buildings stayed closed and classes remained online for months.