Education Week - January 15, 2014 - 12

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS > Tracking news and ideas in educational technology
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School Systems Struggling to Fill Digital Bandwidth Gap
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tions to the Internet.
The E-rate program, which provides
more than $2 billion each
year for schools and libraries to
buy telecommunications services
at discounted prices, further limits
districts by requiring them to pay a
monthly fee for the data that flows
through newly built fiber networks,
rather than taking the more cost-effective
approach of leasing the actual
cable (known as "dark fiber") itself.
Many telecommunications companies
seem content with the current
arrangements.
But some education-technology advocates,
including Evan Marwell, the
CEO and co-founder of the San Francisco-based
nonprofit EducationSuperHighway,
which advocates for
upgrades to the Internet infrastructure
serving K-12 public schools,
argue that the system is unfair.
"Self-provisioning and dark fiber
should be competitive options so the
E-rate program can actually deliver
the bandwidth our schools need,"
said Mr. Marwell, whose group is
calling for changes in E-rate regulations,
as well as a one-time investment
to upgrade the country's fiberoptic
infrastructure.
This spring, the Federal Communications
Commission is expected
to vote on revisions to the E-rate
program, the culmination of a longawaited
overhaul. It remains unclear
if and how the provisions related to
fiber-optic cable will change.
In the meantime, districts from
Montana to Virginia to New York
have become increasingly proactive
in finding ways to connect to fiber
despite the challenges.
Struggles and Frustrations
Butte's efforts came after a decade
of struggles and frustrations.
First, said Ms. Jonart, the company
that provided the district's old wireless
network went out of business.
Butte schools also had to fight a new
carrier just to get access to outdated
T-1 phone lines for some of its schools,
she said. Though such lines offer only
1.5 megabits per second of connectivity-not
enough to support more than
a handful of students using multimedia
content at the same time-T-1
and similar DS-1 lines still served as
the primary connection to an Internet
service provider for 42 percent of U.S.
school districts as recently as 2008, according
to the NCES. Experts say that
figure has likely decreased in recent
years, but not dramatically.
And for the past five years, the
Butte district has been using a
shared network operated by a cable
company. It's a fiber connection, but
Ms. Jonart said the company has not
offered her district a cost-effective
way to move beyond its current bandwidth
of 10 megabits per second-far
slower than the 100 mbps called for
in President Obama's ConnectEd
program and not enough to allow all
the students in a school to take online
How Some Districts
Are Making Progress
Experts say that fiber-optic cable
is still the "gold standard" for
providing schools with high-speed
connections to the Internet, but for
many districts, accessing complete
fiber networks remains a challenge.
Here's how three school systems are
finding ways to make it happen:
Butte, Mont.
Unable to find a telecommunications
firm offering a fast, reliable, and affordable
connection between the Internet and the
12 buildings scattered across her rural
district, Butte Superintendent Judy M.
Jonart decided to start from scratch. The
result was an extensive public-private
partnership involving the Butte schools, a
local economic-development organization,
the surrounding county of Silver Bow, the
local branch of Montana Tech University,
and Fatbeam, a small company dedicated
solely to fiber build-outs in the Western United
States.
"We work really well together in Montana,"
said Ms. Jonart, now in her second year as
Butte's superintendent after 14 years as the
director of curriculum and technology for the
5,000-student district.
As part of a 10-year contract, the Butte
district will pay to lease the new "lit" fiber
(the bandwidth provided by the new network,
amounting to 2 gigabits-per-second, per school)
for a total of $14,000 per month, 61 percent of
New York City
Unlike many districts struggling to access fiber, New York City
is neither rural nor remote. But as of December, 5 percent of the
buildings operated by the 1.1 million-student district still lacked a
high-speed Internet connection via fiber-optic cable.
Here's how the department's massive network works: A
Synchronous Optical Networking ring connects large hubs in each of
the city's five boroughs with each other and with the district's central
servers and Internet. Telecommunications firms, including Time
Warner, Sidera, and Verizon, manage most of the fiber-optic cable
running between those hubs and the city's schools. But in some cases,
that fiber doesn't make it all the way to the schoolhouse doors.
"It's really about what we need to do to connect that last mile," said
Hal Friedlander, the district's chief information officer.
Building out those final pieces of the New York City district's
network has been a five-year project that has cost about $80 million,
Mr. Friedlander said. About 70 percent of that is covered by federal
E-rate funds, according to the district. (Education Week also reported
in October how slow Internet speeds contributed to a $41 millionand-counting
settlement with the city teachers' union.) The work can
involve either standard construction or specialized "micro-trenching"
work, which involves working with carriers to lay fiber-optic cable
just below the surface of busy city streets. Either way, it's a laborious
process that requires collaboration between the district, telecoms,
New York City's departments of transportation and information
technology, the office of the city's deputy mayor, and a number of
construction companies, most of whom meet weekly.
For the district, "it's a lot like being a general contractor," Mr.
Friedlander said. "Each step has to be done in the right order and be
tested and verified for the next vendor."
which will be covered by federal E-rate funds.
The local college, library, and government
facilities will receive similar service.
Gregory Green, the president of Fatbeam,
said his company has done similar work in
19 markets across Idaho, Montana, Oregon,
Washington, and Wyoming.
"The knowledge base of these smaller school
districts is really growing," Mr. Green said. "In
the past, there weren't many options, so they
didn't think outside the box much. We're starting
to see a paradigm shift."
Suffolk, Va.
What started as a challenge for Suffolk City Schools, on the
edge of the Great Dismal Swamp in southern Virginia, turned
into an opportunity.
After a cable provider in the area failed to meet its obligations
almost 15 years ago, a settlement led to an agreement
between the city and the company to provide fiber-optic cable
connections to public buildings in the area. The 14,000-student
district pounced, spending about $750,000 for "last-mile" fiber
connections to each of its schools-one-tenth of what it would
have cost to lay all the fiber itself.
Now, the district owns most of its own high-speed network,
allowing it to avoid the large monthly bandwidth fees typically
charged by telecommunications companies and retaining the
flexibility to inexpensively increase its bandwidth as needed.
"From a philosophical perspective, we've always felt that
infrastructure was first," said John W. Littlefield, the district's
director of technology.
That approach continues: The district recently spent big to
run all the fiber to a new elementary school, and it has a made
a point of not outsourcing the management of its network or
related hardware.
"I don't have to pay someone $200 an hour to configure a
switch," Mr. Littlefield said.
The biggest payoff, he maintained, has been in the classroom.
When the district's instructional team wanted to roll out new
online assessments last fall, the network was ready.
"Bandwidth wasn't even a consideration," Mr. Littlefield
said. "It's important for the instructional team to have that
confidence that the [Internet] connection will be there." -B.H.
"What we did in Butte can
be replicated in other cities.
It takes a lot of working
together, but it's doable,"
said Butte Superintendent
Judy Jonart, standing in the
data center that will be part
of the backbone of the
district's new fiber-optic
network.
12 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 15, 2014 | www.edweek.org
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Education Week - January 15, 2014

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