The FCC education funding will support more than 300 schools, 25 libraries and two consortia
Roughly 170,000 students across the U.S. will benefit from the more than $81 million in emergency connectivity funding announced this week by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The funding, dispersed through the Emergency Connectivity Program, will support more than 300 schools, 25 libraries and two consortia in Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Washington and the District of Columbia.
“With students heading back to classrooms this fall, we need to make sure all our kids can connect with teachers and homework assignments when school ends for the day,” said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “This latest round of funding will help make that happen, and bring us closer to closing the Homework Gap.”
This recently announced funding is just the latest in a series of funding aimed specifically at providing connectivity and digital support to underserved U.S. communities.
So far, the FCC has committed nearly $5.8 billion to schools and libraries in the U.S. as part of this program and in doing so, has benefitted more than 13 million students across approximately 10,000 schools, 900 libraries and 100 consortia, and as supported additional services like off-campus learning, such as nightly homework. Modern education, of course, requires reliable broadband connectivity and digital tools and devices like laptops and tablets, Wi-Fi hotspots, modems and routers. To that end, the FCC funding has also provided nearly 12 million connected devices and more than 7 million broadband connections.
