This excerpted article by Melanie Asmar first appeared on the Chalkbeat website, on August 28, 2020. Read the full article here.
When COVID-19 hit, the internet became an essential school supply. Districts in the Denver metro area scrambled to meet the need, collectively spending more than $1 million in the past five months to buy mobile hotspots and pay families’ internet bills so children could learn.
Philanthropies and foundations have spent even more.
But the effort hasn’t been enough. Tens of thousands of Colorado students still don’t have internet access at a time when half of students statewide are starting the school year virtually, and those taking classes in person may have to move online on short notice.
Even families who have gotten connected say the low-cost or temporary options often touted as a solution to bridge Colorado’s gaping digital divide can be slow and unreliable. And the cost of high-speed internet is just one barrier. Other problems include geography and infrastructure, and not just for rural Coloradans.
“Out here, internet can be shaky at best,” said Zuton Lucero-Mills, a mother of five who lives in the Green Valley Ranch neighborhood in far northeast Denver.
Some lawmakers, superintendents, and education advocates are calling for a fundamental shift in the way Colorado thinks about internet access, arguing it should be treated less like a luxury and more like a public utility. But such a shift would take time and money. And until it happens, many families — often low-income families of color — face difficult choices.
Tamika Aumiller has been on a waiting list for a hotspot since March. A single mother who works nights stocking groceries, Aumiller said she can’t afford home internet. When Denver schools shifted to remote learning in the spring, Aumiller had to send her 6-year-old daughter Addy to live with her parents 45 minutes away in Park County. Aumiller’s only source of internet, her cell phone, wasn’t enough to support Addy’s online kindergarten.
But even that situation wasn’t ideal: Addy’s grandparents are not tech savvy and their internet service was spotty. Whenever it crashed, Aumiller had to relay the message to Addy’s teacher, who would mail her packets of worksheets. Aumiller would then take photos of Addy’s completed work and send them to the teacher. Addy’s grandmother would make voice recordings of the girl reading out loud and send those to the teacher, too.
“It was a disaster,” Aumiller said.
And Aumiller feared it would happen again. Three days before school was scheduled to start online in Denver this week, she was still waiting for a hotspot from the district. So she made a difficult decision, one that will temporarily separate her from her daughter: She filled out paperwork to register Addy for school in Park County, where classes are being held in person.
Addy got in. She starts first grade there on Monday.
“My biggest worry is that she’s going to get behind in school,” Aumiller said. “With the way remote learning went last year, they had to pass everybody. I don’t want her to just skate through because they have to pass people. I want her to learn the things she needs to learn.”
Stop-gap solutions
As schools across Colorado shifted to online learning in March and April, a survey conducted by the state education department and the Colorado Education Initiative found that about 53,000 Colorado students lacked a computer or tablet. Even more students — nearly 66,000 — didn’t have internet access at home, the statewide survey found. U.S. Census data suggests the number of households without reliable internet in Colorado could be much higher.
In the past five months, the number of students without a computer has shrunk, as school districts rushed to order devices in bulk and distribute them to kids in need.
But experts fear the number of students without internet access has actually grown. And the reasons why touch on societal problems that are not as easy for school districts to fix — and business decisions by private companies that school districts don’t control.
If a parent loses their job and can no longer pay their internet bill, or if an internet company’s free offer expires, the solution isn’t as simple as buying the family a single device like a computer. It’s a matter of finding a way to pay for a sustained service.
“In 2020, broadband internet is not an option; it’s an essential service for living,” said Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova. “This moment has revealed that reliable internet access at home is as vital as power and running water.”
In the absence of a long-term solution, school districts have deployed stopgap measures. Many have bought and distributed hundreds, or even thousands, of internet hotspots, which are pocket-sized devices that use cell phone service to establish a Wi-Fi connection.
But the districts quickly discovered that hotspots don’t always work. In southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, Centennial School District Superintendent Toby Melster said the surrounding mountains often block the signal. Although his district received a donation of 50 hotspots, he estimates that about 30% of the district’s 200 students still aren’t connected.
For those who are, the connection can be tenuous. One family made an X with tape on their countertop to signify the one place in the house where the hotspot got a signal, he said.
Other families, both rural and urban, have run into a different problem. Hotspot signals are often not strong enough to support multiple siblings doing Zoom calls or uploading homework assignments at the same time. Sometimes the hotspots don’t work at all.
That’s what happened to Maria Rojas’ oldest daughter in the spring. When the hotspot provided by her Denver high school failed to connect, Rojas’ daughter began doing her schoolwork on her cell phone. But she wasn’t able to complete all of her assignments that way.
“She had kind of a nervous breakdown,” said Rojas, a parent leader with the community organization Together Colorado. “All she would do is cry and cry, and I had no idea how to help her. She had been one of the most high-achieving students in her class, always getting awards, and she went to being a student who couldn’t turn in assignments.”
Rojas eventually connected her daughter with a psychologist who is still helping the family.
Internet service providers — some of them multibillion-dollar corporations — have the power to provide more permanent solutions. With persistent prodding from parents, teachers, and community groups, a few have made strides in that direction.
Comcast is one of the primary internet providers in the Denver metro area. It has for years offered a discounted program called Internet Essentials. In March, as the pandemic unfolded, Comcast announced it would make that program, usually $9.95 per month, free for two months.
But some families still faced big barriers. Initially the company denied services to those with unpaid debt. Undocumented families shied away when the application prominently asked for a Social Security number. And families who did get service said the connection was slow.
Nallely Antúnez Gonzalez had Internet Essentials in the spring. Sometimes her 7-year-old daughter would do her schoolwork online, only to find it all erased when it failed to upload.
“It was like starting over from zero,” Antúnez Gonzalez said. “I would have to explain to her that she had to do it again, and it was really hard for her.”
Coloradans for the Common Good, a group of labor unions and faith communities, set out to change that. They met several times with Comcast executives, telling the stories of parents, teachers, and school social workers struggling to connect families with the internet — and inviting media to cover their extensive advocacy efforts.
The strategy worked. Comcast extended the timeline for its free internet offer and made it clearer that families could use alternative forms of ID.
“That’s an example of what organized people can do,” said Joyce Brooks of the Colorado NAACP and a member of Coloradans for the Common Good. “But now we have entered a new school year. We still have much work to do to close this digital divide.”
The group hasn’t let up. On Wednesday, Coloradans for the Common Good hosted a virtual summit on internet access in education. Panelists included school district officials and representatives from Comcast, as well as hotspot vendors Verizon and T-Mobile.
The organization was direct: Would the companies be willing to work with them to increase access to high-speed internet? All three said yes. But Brent Cooper, the senior manager for government with T-Mobile, said it would take every internet service provider working together, along with municipalities willing to host cell phone towers, to truly solve the digital divide.
“How do you create universal access?” Cooper said. “Well, guess what? It takes all of us.”
Another big internet service provider in Colorado, CenturyLink, didn’t attend the summit. Unlike Comcast, CenturyLink doesn’t offer any free internet. Instead, a company spokesperson pointed to CenturyLink’s participation in the federal Lifeline program, which trims up to $9.25 from a family’s monthly bill.
That could still leave the internet out of reach for many families.
Yesenia Robles and Erica Meltzer contributed to this story.
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