Report Details School Broadband Fix, ARE-ON Optional

Arkansas is ahead of the national average when it comes to school broadband access and can meet its goals without additional state dollars, the nonprofit EducationSuperHighway reported Friday (Dec. 5).

The report, “Smarter Spending for Smarter Students: Upgrading Arkansas’ K-12 Broadband,” offers a number of encouraging observations as schools try to reach broadband connection speeds of 100 kilobits per second (kbps) per student by 2015 and 1 megabit per second by 2018.

Among the observations from the report: No additional state dollars are needed. The cost for that higher target is about $30 million a year – an amount the state can raise by better using existing state funds and leveraging funding through eRate, a federal program that pays for expanding broadband access through telecommunications fees.

The Arkansas Department of Education spends $11 million a year through the Arkansas Public School Computer Network (APSCN) to provide broadband access to all K-12 districts. Seventy percent of those dollars are spent on outdated and very expensive copper wiring. Meanwhile, 90 percent of Arkansas districts purchase internet connections on their own, but they spend that money very differently. Of the $8 million school districts invested in their own broadband access, 93 percent was spent on fiber connections.

The result is that individual district purchases account for 95 percent of the state’s broadband connectivity at an average cost of $13 per megabit per student compared to $286 for APSCN’s much slower copper speeds.

Because Arkansas districts are supplementing APSCN, 58 percent of Arkansas districts meet the 100 kbps standard now, compared to 37 percent nationally. Moreover, Arkansas districts not reaching the target are significantly closer to it than schools across the country are.

Costs in Arkansas are lower, too. Nationally, rural districts typically pay about 50 percent more than urban and suburban districts for high-speed broadband. In Arkansas, however, rural districts pay only 13 percent more. The report says this is likely the “result of the extensive fiber deployment and competitiveness of smaller service providers in rural areas.”

The bad news: No Arkansas districts currently reach the 2018 goal of 1 megabit per student. Moreover, 17 percent offer speeds of only 10-49 kpbs per student, while 5 percent offer less than that.

TWO-STATE SOLUTION, ARE-ON OPTIONAL
The report recommends the state adopt a two-stage solution. The first stage would enable all districts to reach the 100 kbps per student target by July 2015 by redeploying the money it currently spends on copper to broadband. The second stage would combine the state’s more effective use of money and better use of eRate. Because the state is eligible for a 79 percent eRate discount, it could obtain as much as $41 million a year through the program.

Using this process would connect 88 percent of Arkansas students to 1 megabit per second per student by 2018. The remaining students attend schools in districts that have contracts that don’t expire until 2019, at which time they could reach the higher rate.

The report says an aggregated statewide network for internet access is likely the most effective means for Arkansas to meet the targets because of its economies of scale. It does not specifically recommend connecting to the statewide Arkansas Research Education Optical Network (ARE-ON) used by universities and health care providers. However, it does say ARE-ON should be an option, and the law preventing schools from connecting to it should be repealed.

“Basically, our view is we think ARE-ON should be in the mix, but we don’t think that you should preordain that ARE-ON’s going to get the business,” Evan Marwell, EducationSuperHighway CEO, said in an interview. “Whoever’s the most competitive should get the business.”

GUBERNATORIAL LEADERSHIP
Broadband access moved to the forefront of education policymaking when it became increasingly obvious that Arkansas’ public schools lacked the technology to take advantage of the internet or even to administer online Common Core tests. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in the Lake View case that students must be provided an equitable education, so the imbalance among districts raises legal concerns.

EducationSuperHighway, which focuses on increasing broadband in public schools, partnered with the state starting in August 2014 – first collecting data from almost all school districts and then developing a plan to meet the target. Marwell said the state had approached his organization mistakenly believing it was one of the worst-connected in the nation.

EducationSuperhighway chose to focus on Arkansas because of that belief, because the state has many vendors, and because Gov. Mike Beebe was supportive.

“What we’ve found is that when executive leadership, when the governor is behind something, things happen a heck of a lot faster than when it’s just somebody somewhere else in the government who’s supporting it,” Marwell said.

Marwell said he was encouraged by Gov.-elect Asa Hutchinson’s campaign pledge to require all high schools to offer computer programming.

He said his group was able to discover Arkansas’ outdated reliance on copper wiring through the use of data. He was asked during the interview why the state’s current information technology professionals didn’t figure out the problem on their own.

“All I can say on that front is, Arkansas is not the only state missing this stuff. … Other states are having very similar issues, whether it’s copper and fiber, whether it’s spending the money ineffectively,” he said. “This is not an uncommon thing.”