For San Bernardino districts, that means tens of thousands of dollars each month.
“Those are essentially ongoing utility costs,” he says. “That’s what E-Rate pays.”
A “healthy” program
E-Rate has had a notable impact since its founding. It was created by Congress in 1996, when only 14% of schools and libraries could access the Internet. That number is now almost 100%. The FCC has overseen the program through both Democratic and Republican administrations, so when the agency announced a complete review of the program By the end of June, some were confused.
“By their own data and their own measurements, the program is healthy,” Thurston says. “The program is doing what it needs to do and it’s important.”
Others saw this coming. He Project 2025 plan highlighted federal broadband policy as a target to cut agency spending.
Current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr helped write that chapter of the document, compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which was intended to guide the second Trump administration.
Less predictable was the president’s reasoning for reviewing the program: Children spend too much time in front of the screen. In the now approved notice of proposed rulemakingthe FCC calls for a review “to better protect children when using E-Rate-funded networks, including by limiting screen time.”
His prepared statement at the commission hearing in June focused largely on the dangers of screen time for children and the growing body of research on it.
Since January, states such as Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia have passed some type of legislation That requires reevaluating the role of technology in teaching and testing, and more than 10 other states are considering similar restrictions. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, recently approved a policy Limit your students’ screen time.
Some advocates for limiting screen time in school say defunding E-Rate is not the way to reduce the time kids spend on devices.
“We believe there are ways to strengthen school policies to promote more limited, privacy-protecting use of EdTech without removing critical funding from E-Rate,” Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a nonprofit focused on digital safety for children, said in a statement to NPR.
Although states and districts are looking for ways to limit screen time, few (if any) are looking to operate without the internet entirely. Many schools rely on Internet-based systems to track attendance, monitor school bus routes, and conduct testing required by their state. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 48 states now have some type of online component with testing.
Bob Bocher, a senior fellow at the American Library Association (ALA), says that because the program is included in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC probably can’t eliminate it entirely. And last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Universal Service Fundwhich raises money that schools and libraries in turn use to reduce Internet costs, is constitutional.
But the FCC could change the way the E-Rate program is run to make it more complicated, so the ALA is still concerned.
Bocher, who helped work on the original law in the 1990s, worries that the program could become so onerous that it drives away schools and libraries by design.
“It’s like death by a thousand cuts,” he says, “death by a thousand rules and regulations.”
Keep up with the rest of the world
While Internet access has expanded significantly since 1996, Internet prices and options have not changed as Bocher or his contemporaries expected.
“A common assumption that many people had [was] “…competition will evolve,” he says, “and then drive the price down.”
In cities this may be true, but in many rural and remote areas competition for Internet Service Providers or ISPs is non-existent.
“In rural Alaska, we don’t have many options,” says Patrick Mayer, superintendent of the remote Alaska Gateway school district. “We have a supplier.”
Your district, where some students trust airplanes to go to school in the winter months, it has just under 400 students. Still, the district spends more than half a million dollars a year to ensure Internet access at its six schools. The price is high, but the connection is what allows them to keep up with the rest of the world.
“It means the difference between having a school in the 21st century,” Mayer says, “or a school in the 20th century.”
Expanding connectivity in your district allows students to take dual enrollment courses online with a local university and access virtual speech and occupational therapy.
“Replacing that funding,” he says, “would be very, very difficult.”
He imagines there would be no way around cutting staff and student services to find money to pay the district’s entire Internet bill. For now, he’s focused on making some noise.
Once the FCC officially releases notice of its planned review, the public will be able to comment for 60 days. After that, there will be a 30-day response comment period, followed by a full review of all such input by the agency. The process can be time-consuming, but Mayer and other advocates are already working to bring attention to the issue.
He spent a few days this month in Washington, D.C., meeting with lawmakers about the importance of keeping Alaska students connected.
