The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Dalio Education, cities address ‘digital divide’
Dalio Education will work with towns and cities across the state to bring high-speed internet to people who don’t have it, a crisis all the worse in the COVID pandemic because it prevents many students from participating on online learning.
The charity, part of Dalio Philanthropies, announced its latest effort jointly with the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. Both groups said they will issue a plan at the end of August with specifics about money and the scope of the problem, with solutions.
The groups also said Dalio Education would announce projects with individual cities, though they did not name those cities.
The announcement comes almost exactly two months after Ray and Barbara Dalio pulled out of a $200 million, 5-year partnership with the state to address education gaps and target disengaged high school students.
That project, the Partnership for Connecticut, was disbanded in early June amid bickering over open government issues, with the Dalios blaming politics for their decision to end it. They pledged at the time to continue their financial commitment to state education initiatives, but would do so on their own.
As with the Partnershp for Connecticut, the internet initiative includes hopes to bring in other people and groups, and to raise awareness about the digital divide, as the division between connected and unconnected communities is known.
“It’s very exciting and it’s really the only way to really solve this problem, which is a big complex problem, but it is solvable,” Barbara Dalio said Monday on an online announcement with CCM.
Dalio has worked closely with teachers and administrators in some Connecticut school systems for a dozen years. The Dalios — Barbara and her husband, Ray, founder of Bridgewater Associates in Westport, the world’s largest hedge fund — have given millions of dollars through Dalio Education.
The Dalios, the state’s wealthiest household estimated at $18 billion by
Forbes, maintained their commitment to provide 60,000 laptops to high school students in poor performing high schools throughout the state. That effort was originally taken on by the now-defunct Partnership for Connecticut.
“When COVID started, the problem of connectivity had existed for the past 20 years but it never came into the picture in such a strong way as when the teachers had to start teaching online,” Barbara Dalio said. “There are thousands of students that don’t have the connectivity nor have the devices.”
Dalio Education did not make a specific financial commitment to the effort, but will provide matching funds to communities for specific initiatives.
“How can you talk about equity if all of the students are not able to join? So we thought we really have to do something,” Dalio said. “We were able to purchase the 60,000 computers, but the computers is not enough. The connectivity has to come too.”
Andrew Ferguson, chief education officer for the Dalio Philanthropies, said the final tranche of laptops will be delivered by the end of this week.
Joe DeLong, executive director and president of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, said he would not characterize the relationship between CCM and the Dalio Foundation as a “partnership” because it will in be a newly formed legal entity. Instead, he said it is a joint effort between the groups with a shared mission, and the goal to bring as many people into the effort as possible.
“What this is about is people who share a common goal ... the belief that closing the digital divide is important in many ways to providing education and creating economic opportunity,” DeLong said.
Speaking indirectly about the state partnership, he said, “There are a lot of initiatives that find bumps along the way ... Our concern is finding creative collaborative ways with not just us, but other groups and other people who want to come into this movement. Things that happened in the past that maybe didn’t accomplish what they hoped to accomplish. That happens all the time.”
He added, of the Dalios, “Their heart is into this, it’s not just their wallet. Barbara’s passion about caring for these kids and doing things in the right way. We really believe that we’re going to find a way to make a difference in this issue.”