Sunday, July 5, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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The deadly COVID-19 pandemic has placed a sobering light on the vast inequalities that exist in urban communities across our great nation.
So how will our disadvantaged population learn and thrive in this digital age without the necessary tools and internet services to sustain their academic progress?
The chief data analytics officer for Microsoft says the company’s internal data indicates that 163 million American households aren’t using the internet at broadband levels. That’s roughly half the American population, and it’s a pretty grim reality in the face of the need to move learning to digital spaces as we face COVID-19.
Before the virus, there was already a tremendous disparity in the number of households that had reliable internet access. Public libraries, school sites and retailers with free Wi-Fi have stood in a gap that many have acknowledged, but few have fully addressed.
We cannot continue to think of internet connectivity as a luxury item in this country.
In the rush to ensure that our children maintain some academic structure despite social distancing, via online learning, the technology imbalance has become stark.
According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, many households don’t have wired high-speed internet (14.1%), greatly hampering their ability to best engage in online learning. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission reports that 21.9 million Americans simply don’t have access to a broadband connection at all.
If our children are being sent to digital spaces to earn their education, we have to ensure connectivity for every one of them. We cannot continue to ignore the fact that millions of American children live in technology black holes, leaving them cut off from the sea of knowledge that their peers have access to, when they reach their homes.
In this quickly evolving new normal, one in which their very future is dependent upon having access to online learning, it would be akin to ignoring that they are starving for food.
Some of our families have found a way to access digital devices through services providing either free or low-cost new and refurbished equipment.
But what do they do in this new dynamic when they have one device, two or three school-aged children who need access to it for lessons during the day, and a low-grade internet connection? What do the adults in a household do if they simultaneously need it for their own work or schooling?
A 2020 Brookings Institution study, pre-COVID-19, found that “broadband is the country’s most inequitable infrastructure.”
Many parents were already struggling to find solutions to the digital divide, taking their children to parking lots of gas stations and fast food restaurants to complete homework assignments and projects. This is in addition to the reality that many adults lack the digital skills to ensure that their households are connected and utilizing high-speed internet.
One solution that is rapidly increasing in popularity is the deployment of high-speed internet hotspots to families. These hotspots are a lifeline for those who might not otherwise have access to high-speed internet or those who might be hesitant to make the investment when they have limited funds and limited knowledge of how to use the technology in the first place.
The Clark County School District provided hotspots on buses, with limited success. COVID-19 has put a magnifying glass on the inequities of urban education across America. We need leadership at the highest level to provide our most vulnerable students with basic necessities, such as Wi-Fi connectivity, so all students can compete.
In March, the Federal Communications Commission waived the rules surrounding the ability of tech firms to make donations to school districts that have received federal E-rate funding — money used to offset the costs of technology upgrades.
The short window, which ends in September, opens the door for firms to support American education as we all work to find solutions spawned by this crisis — and tech firms are answering the call.
It is a tremendous gesture and it will take more creative ideas like it to keep our children on track. Their future, and ours, depend on it.
Jesus Jara is superintendent of the Clark County School District.
