PENNSYLVANIA (WJAC) — Are our rural students being left behind?
“We’re a very poor small school district,” says Jerry Shoemake, Superintendent of the Tussey Mountain School District.
According to the latest numbers, households in counties across the area are classified as underserved or unserved by the federal broadband equity access and deployment program, meaning these households rely on limited infrastructure, have only a baseline internet connection, or have no internet access at all.
“For families who live up in the mountains, Verizon hasn’t even run phone lines or stuff up there yet,” says Daniel Loht, technology director at Penns Valley School District.
Geographical challenges, like mountains and valleys, continue to create underserved areas for service across various districts.
“It is a slow slog and they’re getting it a little bit at a time. But around here, it’s a very hilly area,” adds Shoemake.
We reached out to the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority to hear why these areas may be seeing slower growth in internet availability.
“The greatest challenges remain in sparsely populated rural areas where difficult terrain and low population density increase the cost of broadband deployment. The primary challenges are deployment costs, permitting, utility pole access, and the geographic realities of serving remote, low-density areas,” a spokesperson said.
There’s no real profit in it for companies. So, it’s like pulling teeth from these people to get the stuff out here. But I think slowly it’s coming.
So, what are area districts doing to help students without reliable internet at home?
“You have to make accommodations for them in some type of way, whether that’s turning the virtual work into paper based work, something like packets and things like that, or make other accommodations if they have a relative just working with each family individually,” says Shane Hazenstab, Superintendent of the Penns Valley School District.
“We would do whatever it would take to make sure it would be possible for them to have access, whether it would be opening our doors after hours. I’ve had students that I have seen work on college assignments in the parking lot because they can come and get wi-fi here on their device,” adds Dave Freidenbloom, director of curriculum at Chestnut Ridge.
Districts also say they’ve sent home hotspots to students that they can set up to complete online work at home, while some students have even found their own solutions.
“I think there have been instances in some of our tougher areas where kids go to grandparents that have internet or find friends that have internet; it’s an unfortunate situation.”
And for rural students who may live hours from their closest museum or library, online access can truly elevate their learning
“In a rural community, the internet gives you access to the world.”
In some of our rural areas, the school district itself is the hub for not only students, but for the region, like Chestnut Ridge School District in Bedford County, which looks to open its doors to community members struggling with access.
“If someone needs to access something and all they need to do to sign up, we have internet access, we can help them.”
The Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority adds that there are several federally funded broadband programs being implemented across the commonwealth, like the CPF Broadband Infrastructure Program that has benefited more than 17-thousand Pennsylvania homes and businesses already and looks to make it closer to 30-thousand locations within the next year.
Officials say students and faculty will see access significantly expand in rural communities.
We understand their frustration. Connecting every Pennsylvanian takes time, and expanding broadband to unserved communities remains one of the commonwealth’s highest infrastructure priorities.
“I think that eventually, the promise that we will all have high speed internet will come to fruition. I don’t know if it’ll be right away, but I think they have a serious plan to get there.”