Arkansas is poised to make the transition to high speed broadband Internet in every school district in less than four years, a consultant told legislators at a joint meeting of the House and Senate Education committees Tuesday.
Representatives from the nonprofit EducationSuperHighway gave legislators more details about a pilot program aimed at bringing high speed Internet access to every school in Arkansas by 2018. Gov. Mike Beebe announced the program Monday. It would take $15 million the state spends on copper wire infrastructure and use it to pay for cheaper, faster fiber-optic cables instead.
Evan Marwell, chief executive officer of EducationSuperHighway, said the nonprofit has spent the past two months collecting and analyzing data from each of the state's school districts to get an accurate picture of what the state needs. He said he hopes to have the first phase of the plan finished by January so that school districts can apply for about $40 million in additional federal reimbursement funding.
"When we first heard about Arkansas, we heard that it was one of the worst states in the nation for connectivity, that it was far behind everyone else. The reality is, when you look at the data, Arkansas is doing better than the nation as a whole," Marwell said. "The biggest reason of why we came to Arkansas is not because of where you stand today, but because of the commitment that the state has shown to this issue. Dedicating $15 million a year to connectivity is highly unusual for a state."
He said the group had finished its data analysis of about 90 percent of the state's school districts, and found that all but 25 of the 238 school districts purchase additional Internet capacity from private Internet providers at an average rate of about $13 per megabit of Internet speed. The other 25 buy Internet access through the Arkansas Department of Information Services, which uses the expensive copper wire. It charges schools about $285 per megabit of Internet speed per month for the slower infrastructure.
Broadband Internet access has come into sharp focus in Arkansas over the past year as both the Legislature and the governor directed different study committees to examine the availability of Internet in the state's public schools.
The lack of bandwidth is starting to cause problems for school districts as more standardized tests are offered only online. Act 1280 of 2013, passed by the Arkansas Legislature, also requires every school to provide at least one interactive online course, beginning this fall.
The questions of how to increase that access has caused a rift between the study committees and the private Internet service providers.
"One of the continual challenges is getting the Department of Education and our service providers on the same page. The providers have come to the table willingly... but they have to be concerned about their bottom line," said Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock.
Chesterfield asked Joe Freddoso, who works with EducationSuperHighway, about how the group persuaded service providers to support their efforts. Freddoso formerly ran MCNC, the North Carolina nonprofit that manages that state's educational Internet backbone. It has taken high-speed Internet to 98 percent of that state's schools over the past eight years.
Freddoso said that not everyone walked away smiling after meetings with MCNC, but everyone agreed on the common goal of increasing educational opportunities for children.
"When the infrastructure gets in the way of giving our students opportunity, something needs to be done to fix that infrastructure," he said. "To make this work, you have to build a big tent and everybody has to be involved. We accomplished this by being a nonprofit in the middle that showed the business opportunity to the providers in the state that they could gain incremental revenue by serving K-12 with fiber-based services rather than the old way of doing this over copper."
Len Pitcock, director of government affairs for a major service provider, Cox Communications, was at the meeting Tuesday to listen to the presentation.
"I think that it's encouraging when you take a look at what the governor's office and the General Assembly have done over the last week," Pitcock said. "We're having conversations now that we should have been having a year ago. We were encouraged by the data released today by this group because it confirms what we have been saying over the last 12 months."
Pitcock said the groups studying the broadband issue in Arkansas have pointed to national studies grading Arkansas with an F in terms of its broadband efforts, but the service providers have defended the amount of cable and infrastructure they've built in the state over the past decade.
Marwell said Tuesday that the data his group collected showed 51 percent of the school districts in the state had enough broadband access to meet the current federal standard, compared with 37 percent nationwide. He also said only one district in the state -- Smackover School District -- had the fiber network to provide the higher federal goal set for Internet capacity by 2018.
The Internet service providers still have at least one concern about the broadband expansion.
They're concerned the Legislature will vote to connect K-12 schools to the existing high-speed, fiber optic cable system that serves most of the state's colleges and universities called the Arkansas Research Education Optical Network. Providers want to prevent AREON from allowing school districts to buy in because they say it puts the state in competition with private providers. Marwell said there might be other ways for school districts to reap some of the benefits the network offers colleges.
Marwell said the nonprofit would also work with the two consultants currently conducting studies of the state's broadband capabilities and the cost of providing access in schools, to make sure that there was no duplication in their work.
"I think there is a chance for these three entities to work together to provide a very complete and comprehensive view of where we stand before we go into session," said speaker-elect Rep. Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, who advocated one of those studies.
Metro on 08/13/2014