How Much Will It Cost to
Connect Almost All Schools
By Tony Wan | EDsurge
A
t a time when the number of digital tools to serve
teachers and students has exploded, schools’ existing
IT infrastructure have struggled to keep up. It begs
the obvious question: what’s the point of making available
all this new online innovation if teachers and students can’t
access them?
So how much will it cost to “Keep calm and connect all
schools”? Try $3.2 billion. That’s how much CoSN (Consortium for School Networking) and the EducationSuperHighway say it will cost to equip and update public K-12 schools’
existing infrastructure in order to meet President Obama’s
goal of connecting 99% of students by 2018.
Despite “nearly universal support” for increasing funding
for school networks, this new report from the two nonprofits says “there has been little data entered into the public
record on the amount of funding actually required to ensure
that every school and library has the LAN, Wi-Fi, and WAN
equipment it needs.”
“This is the first time that we have come out with an actual
number,” EducationSuperHighway CEO Evan Marwell tells
EdSurge. “It’s based on an actual analysis rather than simply
saying ‘let’s double the pool of funds needed for more broadband.’
This report follows an April 2014 report by EducationSuperHighway that analyzed how funds from E-rate, a
federal program that subsidizes the purchase of telecommunications services in schools and libraries, are currently
being spent. Only 54 percent of the $2.4 billion went toward data network services, while the remaining was spent
on non-broadband utilities like web hosting and email. The
report also found that 63 percent of U.S. schools are not
meeting current bandwidth goals of 100 kbps per student.
“That first report was about getting bandwidth to the
school door,” Marwell tells EdSurge. “This is the second half
of the puzzle. It’s about the networks inside the building and
what it takes to get bandwidth inside the classroom and to
students’ devices.”
The report dives into fine detail, estimating how much it
will cost schools to purchas K[