Jerry Jones: Arkansas Lawmakers, Help Our Students Get Ahead

Editor’s note: This guest commentary was written by Jerry Jones, EVP of Acxiom Corp. and chairman of FASTER, a coalition of business leaders, educators and advocates supporting high-speed Internet in schools statewide.

Acxiom, Tyson, Walmart, Murphy Oil and Dillard’s among other national companies allow Arkansas to rise above the rest of the nation with their businesses. They make smart investments in Arkansas, because they want to recruit and maintain the best and brightest talent.

As a business leader in Arkansas, I want us to continue to invest in our state’s future, prepare our students for the jobs of the future and be the place where our best and brightest students seek to stay. To lead the way in business, innovation and entrepreneurship for the new-tech jobs of tomorrow, we must take the steps necessary to become a leading state in education. When we do so, we will see dramatic economic and social benefits.

There are of course a number of changes that need to be made, but our schools have one impediment that can easily be remedied: every school must have high-speed Internet accessibility. Arkansans from all four corners of the state and various industries have come together over the past year to address this issue.

We now have multiple studies that all come to the conclusion that there are a significant number of Arkansas public schools that are below appropriate national standards for Internet infrastructure capabilities. True, there are different perceptions of the amount of the deficiency, but the reality is there are significant deficiencies. No one can credibly argue that we do not have an adequacy issue.

While there are a variety of different perspectives on how to solve the problem there is a large common ground upon which consensus can be constructed.

First, there is common understanding that having high-speed Internet capabilities in our public schools is an essential foundation for the state to fulfill its responsibility to provide high quality education opportunities for all of our students.

Second, there is common understanding that a significant percentage of our public schools are below national standards for high-speed Internet.

Third, there is common understanding that our schools must be able to meet the national connectivity standards that increase by a factor of 10 over the next three school years and that we must catch up, and get ahead and stay ahead.

Fourth, there is understanding that time and technology have moved well past the capabilities of a copper based network. From this common ground, let’s move forward rapidly to create and implement a comprehensive Arkansas solution.

Three separate independent studies of these issues all agree that there are many benefits of having an aggregated network as a part of pathway to give all our students access and above the national standard. As the Education Superhighway study states, connecting districts to a backbone type statewide network is likely to be the most effective means for our Arkansas students to have access that meets the goals without costs exceeding our historical budget.

This is not a surprise.

It makes common sense from a fiscal, security, filtering and capacity perspective. The most recent report from CT&T also says they are not opposed to a backbone approach, nor do they question its need or value. They simply question the cost savings.

We all understand that aggregating purchasing power is an effective way of lowering costs of purchases. It works for agricultural co-ops, as well as for purchasing Internet services. At the same time, limiting service competition, or artificially limiting alternatives, will likely result in higher prices. The only way to assure the best price is to let the competition begin.

What we currently do in Arkansas distorts two basic economic realities.

First, we fail to aggregate the purchasing power of our 260 school districts. Presently, almost all these districts are negotiating separately for Internet services.

Second, a recent amendment to our state law was clearly designed to prevent an existing taxpayer-funded backbone network – which you have already paid for and which is already serving our libraries, hospitals and colleges – from competing for public schools. Both of these economic distortions can be addressed and easily made right.

For the past year, I have advocated that the fastest and most fiscally prudent answer is to allow our public schools the option of using the already existing and taxpayer funded ARE-ON Internet backbone while private companies are used to make the high speed connection from the schools to the ARE-ON backbone. Over 40 other states have generally done it this way. This would allow every option to be available and allows the fundamental economics of competition to assure the lowest total cost. But, what I have advocated even more strongly for is to fix the problem now! Do not let another school year pass.

Let’s get our students and teachers the Internet2 capabilities they presently need now. Even if it costs us taxpayers more if ARE-ON is not allowed to compete, let’s get it done.

Creating the opportunities for personal and societal advancement that result from higher quality K-12 education enabled by fast Internet access will be well worth the investment. Surely, this issue will be among the most timely and important that Governor-elect Hutchinson and the Legislative will solve in the upcoming session.

I am confident that they will do their best to position our public schools to rise above the rest rather than always playing catch up.