Consultant issuing Net suggestions

State must move quickly on access for schools, group says

The Arkansas Department of Education in the next month will have to put out a request for bids to provide high-speed Internet to school districts if the state hopes to meet a national goal for broadband access available to every student by the start of the next school year.

That recommendation, along with a handful of others, will be released today by the nonprofit consultant EducationSuperHighway, a group focused on helping get highspeed, high-capacity Internet to schools.

Evan Marwell, the nonprofit’s chief executive officer, said Wednesday that the state, particularly the Education Department, must move quickly to put out the request for proposals to keep in sync with the federal deadline to apply for reimbursement through the E-Rate program.

The Federal Communications Commission awards E-Rate dollars to reimburse districts for money spent on Internet access. Reimburse-

ment is weighted with more dollars awarded to districts in high-poverty or rural areas.

Marwell estimated that $30 million in funding could be available from the federal program.

“But if the state waits for this transition to a new administration to get started, then it could miss out on that money this year and have to wait until the 2016 school year to meet this goal,” he said.

EducationSuperHighway chose two states, Arkansas and Virginia, in which to launch a free pilot initiative in August to assess what broadband Internet is available to schools and to help write a strategic plan to meet federal standards for Internet access.

Marwell said Wednesday that the nonprofit’s staff had reached 99 percent of the state’s school districts in its assessment and that the results were “surprising.”

“Previous studies had sort of given the general view that Arkansas is worse than the rest of the nation in terms of Internet access. I think the study we had seen before coming to Arkansas showed it was the second worst,” Marwell said. “But that study only looked at the broadband the state was purchasing on behalf of the school districts.

“When we looked at that and the broadband school districts were purchasing privately, it turned out Arkansas is doing much better than the rest of the nation.”

Marwell said the assessment showed 58 percent of Arkansas’ school districts have enough Internet access to provide the federal recommendation of 100 kilobits per student of Internet access by 2015. Nationwide, about 37 percent of school districts have enough Internet capacity.

Kilobits, megabits and gigabits per second are measures of data transfer rates. The more data that can move per second over the Internet, the faster the Internet connection, which makes it easier to stream videos or participate in live classes or tests.

“That was sort of the first thing we saw and said, ‘Wow, this is a good sign,’” Marwell said.

The executive summary of the report recommends immediately changing how Arkansas pays for Internet access to school districts. The full 20-page report of recom- mendations will be released by Friday, Marwell said.

Under the current funding model, the Education Department gives about $11 million to the state’s Department of Information Systems to provide basic Internet service to school districts through the Arkansas Public School Computer Network. But consultants found that the infrastructure used by the Information Systems Department to provide broadband is mostly copper, an antiquated and expensive system compared to fiber cables.

In the executive summary, the nonprofit writes that the $11 million provides 5 percent of school districts’ basic Internet needs but uses about 58 percent of the funding at a rate of about $286 per megabit of Internet data. School districts privately purchase the remaining 95 percent of their Internet access for about $8 million at an average rate of $13 per megabit.

Marwell said the group’s goal is to help the state purchase enough Internet bandwidth for students but also find a deal that would bring the prices closer to $2 per megabit — the average reached by states such as North Carolina, Ohio and Nebraska.

The short-term plan is to make the $11 million available for contracts to provide Internet access for about 90 to 120 school districts that either don’t purchase private Internet access currently and fall far below the per-student goal or districts that have a private Internet contract that is about to expire and could be negotiated at a better price, Marwell said.

“The other two things we recommend for that money are … we believe there are sufficient funds to also upgrade the service with existing Internet service providers to 100 kilobits per student at districts that have contracts that aren’t expiring,” he said. “And for those districts with contracts that aren’t expiring but do have 100 kilobits per student access, there’s enough funding to subsidize their purchases so that every school is benefiting.”

Marwell said the request for proposals, which is 95 percent written, has to allow companies to bid for individual school district contracts, for clusters of contracts or for other configurations so no company is prohibited from applying because of location or infrastructure costs.

“That really will help the state make the most of that money and help get closer to that $2-per-megabit goal,” he said.

The contracts likely would be limited to one year to begin work on the long-term recommendation made by the study — to create a statewide K-12 education network.

Private Internet providers and education advocates have been arguing over whether the state should open an existing system of high-capacity fiber-optic cables that connect the state’s public universities, two-year colleges, research hospitals and some libraries.

The Arkansas Research Education Optical Network, known as ARE-ON, is a public-private partnership that uses Internet cable owned by the private providers and leased and managed by the public entity. Providers want to keep the network closed to school districts.

Marwell said the EducationSuperHighway study doesn’t advocate or exclude the network from being part of the solution.

“We believe to get the best bandwidth at the lowest cost for taxpayers, students and schools, we need to have the most competitive procurement process possible. So we’re not precluding any entity from being a part of that solution,” he said.

Gov. Mike Beebe advocated earlier this year that the Legislature change a state law that specifically excludes K-12 schools from accessing the network. A spokesman for Beebe said Wednesday that the governor still needed to review the results of the new study before commenting.

“We are very appreciative of the work EducationSuperHighway has put into this and the amount of time they’ve already spent in the state doing this assessment,” said Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Beebe.

The Legislature also commissioned a study of up to $993,780 with CT&T of North Little Rock to assess broadband access, equipment and connectivity at every school in Arkansas. That completed study is due back to the Legislature this month.

Legislators have been debating for more than a year over how to move forward with increased high-speed broadband Internet access at the state’s schools. The conversation has shifted to become a part of the state’s educational adequacy plan because some districts have argued the gap in technological access may be creating a gap in educational opportunities.

Lack of access to broadband has started to cause problems as more standardized tests are moved to online formats. Act 1280 of 2013 also requires that every school district provide at least one interactive online course beginning this fall.