Thurston schools struggle to provide internet access needed for remote learning

Just before the school year began, Jess Thrift and her family unknowingly moved into a house that could not connect to the internet. Her twins had just entered second grade and she worked from home full time.

“If this were a year ago, I would just be irritated that I couldn’t watch TV,” Thrift said. “Now we are talking about … ‘How far behind are my kids going to be in school? What kind of choices are we going to have to make as a family?’”

Thrift requested WiFi hot spots — small mobile routers that can provide internet access where there is none — from the Olympia School District, but still faced logistical challenges. At first, the hot spots wouldn’t work with the Chromebooks she bought for her kids. Thrift said she was only able to troubleshoot the issues because she works with technology for a living.

It could be weeks before her family has reliable internet at home, but Thrift believes her family is one of the lucky ones. Their situation is only temporary.

Families across Washington are struggling with inadequate internet access — a necessity for students to participate in remote learning and complete school work. Thurston County’s three largest school districts — Olympia, North Thurston and Tumwater — have heavily relied on WiFi hot spots to deliver internet to families. It isn’t a permanent fix, but the school districts are currently facing a logistical nightmare.

The state’s most recent push to help connect families is through its K-12 Internet Access Program, funded through the federal CARES Act. The program will fund internet access for 60,000 low-income Washington students and their families. To qualify for the free program, families could not have internet service prior to August.

Thurston County school districts are still working with the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to obtain the codes families will need to access the internet through this program. The districts do not have hard and fast numbers yet for how many families will qualify.

In addition to lacking internet prior to August, families must be able to show they are low-income and eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.

In the North Thurston Public Schools, roughly 40% of students, or 6,000, are eligible for free and reduced-priced meals. The district anticipates it will send families codes for internet access early this coming week.

“The minute we have that information, we are going to start giving it out to our families and getting them signed up,” said Derek Stewart, technology director for North Thurston Public Schools.

Households that can receive broadband internet service will receive service speeds up to 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload through the program. Stewart said those speeds are better than what a hot spot can provide, but families with multiple students attempting to watch Zoom videos may have trouble.

In the Olympia School District, Marc Elliott, chief information officer for Technology Operations, said he doesn’t expect the new program to benefit his district much, if at all. Before the pandemic hit, the district had been working to distribute Chromebooks to all secondary students and provide all students with hot spots if they lacked internet access. The district has not entirely fixed internet connectivity issues for families, but it’s tackled the problem the new OSPI funding is meant to fix, he said.

The Tumwater School District did not have initial estimates for how many families may qualify for the OSPI program. The district has 52 families that cannot access the internet through either broadband or a WiFi hot spot. These are the most difficult people to connect to the internet, because they do not have a good option in their home. Tumwater is prioritizing those students for in-person, small-group learning.

If a family at least has cell phone service, the school district can give them a WiFi hotspot. Even that presents challenges, though. Thrift said her children have not been able to watch certain videos for school using WiFi hotspots. Last week, she and her children went to a friend’s house to use a stronger internet connection.

Some parents have hired consultants to come into their homes, Thrift said, and assess how everyone in the household can use Zoom at one time.

“We have really structured our lives in a way to try and support ourselves through the pandemic,” Thrift said. “We made a lot of hard choices in that effort to create a safety net that allows us to participate in society, but that safety net is all built around internet access.”

This story was originally published October 12, 2020 at 5:45 AM.