Catch up on what you missed with our Education newsletter, sent weekly.A program that helps connect schools and libraries to the internet at discounted rates is under review by the Federal Communications Commission.Educators and advocates are bracing for the funding to shrink or be eliminated.The so-called E-Rate program, created in the 90s, has considerable bipartisan support.
The agency's recent focus on the program has left educators including David Thurston on edge.Thurston oversees technology for the 33 school districts nested inside California's San Bernardino County.The area covers more than 20,000 square miles of southern California: "We have mountain regions, far-flung desert regions, and then our urban and suburban areas.
We're a really diverse county," Thurston says.The county already built the infrastructure to get internet access from the edge of Los Angeles all the way to the state's eastern border, but the spending doesn't end once the fiber optic cables are installed.Internet access bills come monthly."There's no doing without," he says.
School districts "are gonna have to pick up the costs."For San Bernardino districts, that's tens of thousands of dollars every month."Those are ongoing, essentially, utility costs," he says."That's what E-Rate pays for."E-Rate has had a notable impact since its founding.
It was created by Congress in 1996, when only 14% of schools and libraries could access the internet.That number is now near 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 measurement, the program is healthy," Thurston says."The program is doing what it needs to and is important."Others saw this coming.
The Project 2025 blueprint singled out federal broadband policy as a target for cutting agency spending.Current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr helped write that chapter of the document...