Through the pandemic, California’s public faculty districts largely switched to on-line schooling from March 2020 by way of the top of the 2020-21 faculty yr.
That transfer uncovered what number of college students and college districts didn’t have entry to good web service.
Newly out there federal funding goals to alter that in San Bernardino County.
Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino, introduced March 17 that Inland Empire faculty districts and libraries will obtain $18.1 million to enhance high-speed web entry.
“Excessive-speed web is a necessity, not a luxurious,” Aguilar stated in a information launch. “Nobody ought to fall behind at school or miss out on studying as a result of they’ll’t hook up with the web.”
The cash comes from the Federal Communications Fee’s $7.17 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund Program. That program, in flip, was financed by the 2021 American Rescue Plan, which centered on offering coronavirus reduction funding to communities.
Along with enhancing on-campus web infrastructure, like modems and routers, the fund will assist cowl the prices of laptops and tablets, together with Wi-Fi hotspots and different broadband web purchases for college kids, employees and library patrons off campus.
Districts and colleges benefiting from the cash embody:
- Central College District: $1.8 million
- Colton Joint Unified College District: $1.6 million
- Etiwanda Elementary College District: $532,358
- Actual Journey Academies: $129,300
- Rialto Unified College District: $7 million
- San Bernardino Metropolis Unified College District: $6.9 million
Consultants have lengthy warned of the hazards of the “digital divide” between how nicely the city and prosperous and the agricultural and poor can entry the web. However when Gov. Gavin Newsom closed campuses in March 2020, what had been a looming menace turned an emergency. College districts scrambled to buy Chromebooks and different units, practice lecturers and employees who would possibly lack experience and confidence in on-line schooling and assist college students trapped at residence get web entry that many didn’t have.
“College students in the present day can’t be aggressive within the workforce of tomorrow with part-time entry to expertise. This ECF funding will assist create fairness in our neighborhood and alternative for teenagers to be taught at residence in addition to at school,” Harry “Doc” Ervin, superintendent of the San Bernardino Metropolis Unified College District, stated within the launch. “We applaud Congress for lengthening the bridge we’re constructing over the digital divide in our area with this funding in our kids and households.”