State aid to boost broadband for rural students

Schools across Ohio will now have more money to buy Wi-fi mobile hot spots and internet-enabled devices after the state awarded 951 districts broadband education grants.

Lt. Gov. Jon Husted announced that the money will establish new public WiFi hot spots and provide internet access in the homes of 121,000 students statewide.

“The bottom line is, these students will have places to go,” he said during a recent press conference. “Good news for hundreds of thousands of students who have improved access to the internet.”

After Husted and Gov. Mike Dewine waived an initial 50% match contribution from school districts to access the money last month, rural school districts realized that the funding would have a significant impact.

“We always knew we had an accessto-broadband issue in our district,” said

Stephanie Starcher, a superintendent from Washington County. “But we didn’t realize just how significantly until we went online last spring.”

Starcher, the superintendent of the Fort Frye district outside Marietta, said the state awarded it a little more than $151,000.

Most students in the district are being taught in the buildings every weekday this fall. Only 5%, or about 50 kids, chose to learn remotely.

Still, the district is preparing for the possibility that it might need to operate fully remotely if there’s a COVID-19 outbreak, Starcher said.

She said the district will use the money to offer mobile hot spots to households that have cellphone reception, and to pursue satellite internet options. It also will convert school buses into mobile Wi-fi zones.

Starcher said the district is working with the Southeast Ohio Broadband Cooperative, an exploratory committee, to connect families who lack reliable high-speed internet service to providers rather than directly communicate with carriers, which are trying to force school districts such as Fort Frye into a nine-month contract.

The superintendent said that’s impossible to negotiate because the grant runs out in December. And although Starcher is grateful for the funds, she said her students will be out of options if the state does not find a permanent broadband solution.

“If not, we’re only putting a Band-aid on the situation,” she added.

In a statement to The Dispatch, Mandy Minick, the spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Education, said the grants are just the beginning.

“The Broadbandohio Connectivity Grants are intended to reduce and eliminate obstacles that stand between Ohio students and quality internet access,” she wrote. But the department is also launching the Remotedx concept, “which includes a suite supports for remote-education opportunities.”

Tom Davis, president of the Appalachian Children’s Coalition, the advocacy organization that lobbied the state to waive the match requirement, said broadband is just one of the many chronic, generational challenges that southeastern Ohio faces.

“But by the same token, we have to start somewhere,” he said. “We’re living in this COVID moment, and the reality is now.”

The state awarded $7.2 million in grants to the 24 Appalachian counties served by the coalition; that’s 14% of the total funding for a region that has only 10% of the state’s population, according to data from the education department.

“That’s really significant,” Davis said, especially for a region as poverty-stricken and underserved as southeastern Ohio is.

Columbus City Schools was awarded nearly $1.5 million of the $5.1 million allocated to Franklin County school districts. cdoyle@dispatch.com @cadoyle_18