Internet access opening doors

Plan aims to connect more of our kids with high-speed internet

I spent four years in the classroom and three years as a principal. I’ve seen firsthand the importance of connecting our kids with every possible resource they need in the classroom. That’s why the Public Education Department and the governor have made connecting our students to high-speed internet one of our top priorities.

In 2015, the governor announced that every student will have access to high-speed internet. In our large and rural state, sadly, many of our school districts didn’t have the resources they needed or the ability to afford the online access our students deserve. Now, thanks to our work, we’re seeing more students in more places than ever before being connected to high-speed internet. But there’s still plenty of work to be done — and we’re not skipping a beat.

The progress we’ve made didn’t happen overnight. We had to think outside the box, and work with our schools, internet providers, national organizations and even the federal government.

Unfortunately, for many of our school districts in smaller communities, highspeed fiber was simply too expensive. So we brought together New Mexico internet providers and our school districts with one goal in mind: Make sure New Mexico students have the same advantages as students everywhere else in the country.

By working together, we brought down the price of internet for our school districts dramatically. In Gallup, for example, we brought down the internet price per megabyte by nearly 10,000 percent. That’s not a typo ladies and gentlemen — 10,000 percent.

Even better, we leveraged our state funding with our school districts and the federal government. That means the federal government is refunding our school districts for up to 90 cents on the dollar. And as a state we’ve been able to cover that extra 10 cents in most cases.

Good things have been happening fast.

As of this month, 96 percent of K-12 schools are now connected to high-speed fiber internet lines. And 75 percent of our school districts are meeting our highspeed internet goals, a 10 percent increase from 2015. That translates to nearly 125,000 more students having access since 2015. Just last year, we saw an increase of 56,000 students having access.

And in 2016, 25 school districts upgraded their bandwidth through our program. That translates to 189,000 more students with high-speed fiber.

Long gone are the days of “you’ve got mail” and yelling at your kids for hogging the phone line. Now, our students in schools all across our state — in the big city and in rural communities — are taking advanced placement and dual-credit courses wherever they are with reliable, fast internet.

We’ve also worked with the Legislature to pass important bills that help us get internet to all corners of the state. Like House Bill 113, sponsored by Rep. Jim Smith, R-Sandia Park, which empowers our state department of information technology to develop a statewide broadband network. One of the main goals is to connect tribes and pueblos, colleges and universities, and others to improve internet access in rural New Mexico.

The bottom line is: Our students and schools deserve available and affordable internet and we’re doing everything we can — proactively — to make it happen.

The fact is, when everyone works together to accomplish a common goal — as daunting as it may seem — it can become a reality.

I saw it in my classroom. I saw it in my school. I saw it in my school district. And now I’m seeing it at the department as we continue to reform education in our state.

We have to do everything we can to support our students.

Every student can learn, regardless of what their background is or where they are in our large state.

It’s our responsibility to give them every advantage possible — in the classroom, in life and online.