A $50 million partnership between LAUSD and AT&T California to provide thousands of students with high speed internet access is drawing concern from advocates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Los Angeles district schools went remote at the start of the pandemic, the school system\u2019s digital divide was thrown into sharp relief \u2014 making clear many low income students lacked reliable Wi-Fi at home. Unable to connect made it nearly impossible for those students to attend online classes or complete school work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. <\/em>Sign up for The 74 Newsletter<\/strong><\/a><\/p> In May, LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho announced the partnership with AT&T, providing Wi-Fi \u201cin the initial stage\u201d for about 60,000 students. The new initiative uses short-term federal funding to cover nearly all of the cost. Carvalho said federal money would likely cover a second year for participating students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About 90,000 students<\/a> lack broadband service, LAUSD has estimated. And, according to a survey conducted last year<\/a>, 84 percent of families, most low income, had issues accessing a good internet connection at home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a really big deal that LAUSD is doing this,\u201d said Executive Director from Great Public Schools Now Ana Ponce. \u201cUnfortunately\u2026resources are finite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is a chance that LAUSD may not have the funds to provide this beyond a year or two,\u201d Ponce said, \u201cso what is the long term solution for those 90,000 (students)?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ponce also raised issues about using hotspots distributed by LAUSD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHotspots just aren’t great in general, they have drop off,\u201d she said. They don’t work for people when you have a lot of people accessing the same hotspot. And then literally in some communities, hotspots just don’t work.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Evelyn Aleman, founder of Our Voice: Communities for Quality Education said length of time covered by the partnership is \u201cnot enough. Low-income communities have been severely impacted by the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said one of her clients, a mother supporting her low income family of three, \u201cwas paying $80 for the internet. She had to get rid of the service because she just couldn\u2019t afford it. One year simply isn\u2019t enough for parents like her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n LAUSD district 7 board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin, who sponsored a resolution last year calling on LAUSD to make sure all students had access to Wi-Fi, commended the district and AT&T for the initiative, but expressed concern families might not know how to install the internet in their homes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGovernment\u2026 should be providing the Internet similar to how we provide public utilities like water and electricity,\u201d said Ortiz Franklin. \u201cMy hope is… we can continue to not only pay for this service\u2026 but we can also get it covered by the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Veronica Sierra is a junior pursuing a journalism degree at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She was born and raised in Valencia, Venezuela; and moved to California in 2015 where she continued high school, graduating in 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A $50 million partnership between LAUSD and AT&T California to provide thousands of students with high speed internet access is drawing concern from advocates. When Los Angeles district schools went remote at the start of the pandemic, the school system\u2019s digital divide was thrown into sharp relief \u2014 making clear many low income students lacked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":693305,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[190],"tags":[1340,4596,954,1222,1124,895,4595],"series":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/693302"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/693302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":693448,"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/693302\/revisions\/693448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693302"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=693302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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