Education groups express school bandwidth worries

School districts will need better access to broadband if they are going to comply with national common education standards currently being implemented, three state education associations stated in reports to the Legislature’s education committees Tuesday.

The House and Senate Education committees are meeting to determine how much money schools need to provide an adequate education to students in fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015. The current amount is $6,144 per student for the 2011-12 school year. According to a Department of Education spokesman, the department serves 468,656 students.

The associations’ reports detailed their concerns with the current funding level. Other suggestions included cost-of-living increases for teachers, more money for transportation and changing the length and make-up of the school day.

Richard Abernathy, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, said the state needs to address broadband Internet access in the adequacy study because the new common elementary and secondary academic standards will include online testing.

“We’re not prepared right now and I hope we will be,” Abernathy said. “It’s going to have to be addressed at some point.”

Education Department

spokesman Seth Blomeley said the Common Core standards are being gradually implemented and should be in all grades by the 2013-14 school year. He said online testing will not begin until the 2014-15 school year.

The Arkansas Education Association and the Arkansas School Boards Association echoed Abernathy in their written reports to the committees. The associations will present their reports at the next committee meeting in April because time ran out Tuesday, House Education Committee Chairman Eddie Cheatham, D-crossett, said.

The Arkansas School Boards Association report states that the broadband problem needs to be fixed soon.

“The state has both a duty and a responsibility to ensure the infrastructure is ready and available to districts prior to the full implementation date” of the standards and assessments, it states.

Committee member Rep. Duncan Baird, R-lowell, said after the meeting that it was frustrating to hear that in 2012 children don’t have the Internet access they need at school.

“It’s so easy for me to get on my ipad but it’s so difficult to get every student in the state on a similar level of technology,” Baird said. “The biggest hurdle is going to be the technology component, just having access to the Internet. It was just really frustrating because broadband and technology are critical to education.”

Connect Arkansas President Sam Walls stressed that every school in Arkansas is connected to the Internet, the problem is the capacity of that Internet connection, or how much information can be transmitted and at what speed, known as bandwidth.

“It is our understanding that every school has a connection, that doesn’t mean that there is enough capacity to do what that school wants to do,” Walls said by phone. “It’s not an infinite capacity.”

Blomeley said the department is talking with districts and Gov. Mike Beebe about concerns that schools won’t have enough bandwidth.

“It’s just a matter of we have to find the money,” Blomeley said. “The schools need to be linked to be able to take electronic assessments.”

He said the department and the national groups working on the assessment are working to quantify how big the problem is by the end of the summer.

Blomeley said starting next week the department will use a computer program to begin determining schools’ online capabilities and whether those are adequate to handle the new assessment system.

“It will essentially be an electronic survey to calculate the capabilities at each district,” he said.

Department of Information Systems Director Claire Bailey said the state is still determining what the capacity needs are.

“We most likely have the capacity for the majority of schools,” she said. “The rural schools do have some valid concerns. Once we know what we need, we’ll do our best.”

Beebe spokesman Matt Decample said the biggest problem is making sure rural schools have the connection they need and getting schools the amount of bandwidth they need at a price they can afford.

“That can be a tricky balance to find out, obviously,” he said.