E-rate Participants Cite Need for More Funding With ECF Nearing End

E-rate participants highlighted the need for additional support for schools and libraries to provide their communities access to remote learning and work opportunities as the FCC Emergency Connectivity Fund nears its end during a Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition webinar Wednesday. Panelists cited lessons learned from ECF and debated whether the program should be incorporated into E-rate or established as an independently permanent program.

The amount of funding left over “is not very much” and “the big question on everybody's mind is how do we continue the progress of the ECF program and what is our long-term strategy,” said SHLB Executive Director John Windhausen. ECF was "a rousing success," said T-Mobile Vice President-Strategic Alliances and External Affairs Clint Odom.

ECF exposed a "major limitation" in E-rate in that students didn't want to return devices provided through the temporary program, Odom said. The “biggest problem with ECF is that the funding will end,” Odom said, saying E-rate “is not a substitute for ECF” because “there are so many demands on the USF program of which E-rate is only one component.”

Odom urged Congress to create a permanent version of ECF and the FCC to allow more flexibility in E-rate in the meantime. “ECF has taught us that funding for remote learning to narrow the homework gap is desperately needed,” he said, “but an FCC program depending upon contributions from a very narrow slice of users can be problematic.”

The Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System has “reached a lot of people” with E-rate and ECF funding, said Library Director Misty Hawkins. These opportunities “really mean a lot to public libraries,” Hawkins said, and “we need this sort of funding” to expand programs and “educate the public on our needs.”

Hawkins noted ECF’s layout was “horrible for small, rural library systems” because the portal didn't allow the library system’s E-rate liaison to access their information. The process “needed to be streamlined a little bit better” because of the “inconsistency,” she said. "Get rid of the red tape" and "allow anchor institutions to do what they do best," Hawkins said. If the paperwork process for ECF “was much more like E rate, I believe that it would have been less cumbersome,” she said: “ECF was just a completely different can of worms.”

“For this nation to continue with its educational leadership in the world, which also leads to a better economy and in the world, we have to give our students access at home,” said Modesto, California, City Schools Chief Technology Officer Russ Selken. The FCC "did an amazing job in a short period of time,” Selken said, but one issue with ECF was that “the rules were very unclear” during the first year and “a lot of my peers were very nervous about applying for it because there is a stigma in applying for federal funds that if you do something wrong, you get an audit that is not until five years later and all of a sudden you're paying back funds.”

Also Wednesday, the FCC committed nearly $29 million in additional ECF support for about 65,000 students nationwide. "To keep up with their learning during the summer, many students still rely on libraries and schools to make sure they have access to the internet when school is out of session," said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel: "That’s why we’re pleased to announce another round of funding to help close the homework gap by making sure all kids have the digital tools they need to connect with classrooms and teachers, all year round."