City hopes to bring internet to 20,000 students in a year
Up to 2,400 West Side students currently without internet access at home could have it by December under San Antonio’s Connected Beyond the Classroom program, the city’s Office of Innovation said Tuesday.
The effort to bridge the digital divide for students in underserved areas — which became a crisis spawned by the need for remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic — will eventually provide internet access to up to 20,000 students at no cost, Brian Dillard, the city’s chief innovation officer, told a City Council committee.
About one-fifth of San Antonio households with children don’t have ready access to the internet, a survey conducted earlier this year found. The city invested $27.3 million from its general fund to address the problem as part of its coronavirus resiliency and recovery plan.
After the pandemic forced schoolchildren from their desks to learn through their screens, school districts distributed computers and other devices by the tens of thousands in the weeks before the school year started in August amid uncertainty about
The health department continues to recommend no more than six students per classroom and overall building capacity at 25 percent or less until the risk goes down.
“This week is a critical week for us,” Nirenberg said. “It also is around the time schools begin to open up in earnest. We want to see things remain relatively stable. I think we'd be fooling ourselves if we thought there wouldn't be some increase in transmission.”
Bexar County Commissioner Kevin Wolff echoed that.
“We need to stay vigilant,” Wolff said. “We're not out of the woods.”
Also on the horizon is the holiday season. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laid out recommendations discouraging people from allowing in-person trick-or-treating and throwing costume parties on Halloween and having large family gatherings during Día de los Muertos.
Bridger said health officials are beginning to figure out how to tell residents what behaviors are safe during the holidays, but that “it's still a little bit early for us to roll out anything at this point.”
The number of people hospitalized with the deadly virus ticked up slightly Tuesday to 233 from 226 on Monday. Of those, 36 are new patients.
One more person is undergoing intensive treatment from the virus than on Monday. As of Tuesday, 86 patients were being treated in intensive care units.
Three fewer patients are hooked up to ventilators to help them breathe, officials said Tuesday. Metro Health reported 42 patients were on ventilators Tuesday — down from 45 Monday.
Though area hospitals remained under high stress Tuesday, Bridger noted that the overall stress level “has been decreasing.”