August 27, 2024 — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted in July in favor of expanding its E-Rate program for Wi-Fi hotspots and wireless internet access services at a time when an increasing number of students, educators and administrators rely heavily on remote educational tools while online space becomes part of their classrooms.
This announcement is part of FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s broader Learn Without Limits initiative, a three-pronged proposal as it also calls for allocating E-Rate dollars to access Wi-Fi on buses and create a three-year, $200 million pilot program for cybersecurity.
AASA applauds the FCC for its vote to expand the E-Rate program for Wi-Fi hotspots and wireless internet access services. This is another step forward in an important cause long championed by FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, addressing the homework gap. The vote allows the E-Rate program to continue its important work in ensuring our nation’s schools and libraries are able to offer our 24-hour learners 24-7 access to broadband.
David R. Schuler, executive director, AASA, The School Superintendents Association
The E-Rate program is one of the five largest streams of federal funding in our nation’s schools. Part of the FCC’s universal service program, E-Rate serves as a support mechanism that reaches back to 1934 and focuses on ensuring rural consumers had affordable phone service.
Supported by AASA since its inception, E-Rate was added in the 1996 reauthorization of the Telecommunications Act and designed to provide libraries and schools with access to affordable broadband, internet access services and internal WI-Fi use. E-Rate is nearly solely responsible for the nearly universal access that our nation’s students have in schools today, notes AASA.
Rosenworcel has spent her career advocating for and in support of the E-Rate program, including the 2014 modernization of the program that focused on ensuring students had access to broadband.