For the San Bernardino areas, that’s tens of thousands of dollars each month.
“It’s essentially an ongoing utility cost,” he says. “That’s what E-Rate pays for.”
“Healthy” program
E-Rate has had a significant impact since its inception. It was created by Congress in 1996, when only 14% of schools and libraries had access to the Internet. That number is now close to 100%. The FCC has overseen the program through both Democratic and Republican administrations, so when the agency announced a full review of the program in late June, some were confused.
“By its own data and its own measurements, the program is healthy,” Thurston says. “The program does what it needs to do and it’s important.”
Others saw this coming. The The Project 2025 plan highlights federal broadband policy as a cost-cutting objective for the agency.
Current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr helped write this chapter of the document, compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which was intended to lead the second Trump administration.
The chairman’s reasoning was less predictable program overview: children get too much screen time. In the now approved notice of proposed rulemakingThe FCC is calling for a review “to better protect children when they use E-Rate-funded networks, including limiting screen time.”
His statement prepared at the committee meeting in June focused heavily on the dangers of screen time for children and the growing body of research surrounding it.
As of January, states including Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia have passed some form of legislation that calls for a reassessment of technology’s role in teaching and testing, and more than 10 other states are considering similar restrictions. Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, recently approved policy to limit screen time for her students.
Some advocates for limiting screen time in school say gutting E-Rate funding is not the way to reduce the time kids spend on devices.
“We believe there are ways to strengthen school policies to promote more limited and privacy-protective use of EdTech without taking away critical E-Rate funding,” Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a nonprofit focused on digital safety for children, said in a statement to NPR.
Although states and localities are looking for ways to limit screen time, few — if any — want to go without the Internet altogether. Many schools rely on Internet-based systems to track attendance, monitor school bus routes, and administer tests required by their state. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 48 states already have some kind of online component with exams.
Bob Bocher, a senior fellow at the American Library Association (ALA), says that because the program is written into the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC probably can’t eliminate it entirely. and last year the Supreme Court ruled that the universal service fundwhich collects the money that schools and libraries in turn use to reduce Internet costs, is constitutional.
But the FCC could change the way the E-Rate program is run to make it more complicated, so ALA is still worried.
Bocher, who helped work on the original law in the 1990s, worries that the program could become so onerous that it drives away schools and libraries by design.
“It’s like death by a thousand cuts,” he says, “death by a thousand rules and regulations.”
Keeping up with the rest of the world
Although Internet access has expanded greatly since 1996, Internet pricing and options have not changed the way Bocher or his contemporaries expected.
“The common assumption that a lot of people had (was) … competition was going to evolve,” he says. “And then lower the price.”
In cities, this may be true, but for many rural and remote areas, competition for Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, is non-existent.
“In rural Alaska, we don’t have a lot of options,” said Patrick Meyer, superintendent of the remote Alaska Gateway School District. “We have one supplier.”
His area where some students rely on airplanes to get to school during the winter months, there are just under 400 students. Still, the district spends more than half a million dollars a year to provide Internet access at its six schools. The price is high, but the connection is what allows them to keep up with the rest of the world.
“It means the difference between having a 21st century school,” Meyer says, “or a 20th century school.”
Expanding connectivity in his district allows students to take dual-enrollment courses online with a local college and access virtual speech and occupational therapy.
“Filling that funding is going to be very, very difficult,” he says.
He imagines there’s no way to cut staff and student services to find the money to pay the district’s entire Internet bill. For now, he’s focused on making some noise.
After the FCC formally publishes notice of the planned review, the public may comment for 60 days. There will then be a 30-day response comment period, followed by a full agency review of all that data. The process could take a long time, but Mayer and other advocates are already working to bring attention to the issue.
He spent several days this month in Washington, D.C., to meet with lawmakers about the importance of keeping Alaska students connected.
