Helping neediest students bridge the digital divide

STAYING CONNECTED: Students from the West Broadway Middle School in Providence with Cox’s interim Regional Manager and Vice President of Human Resources Pipier Bewlay. Cox has partnered with a nonprofit to provide discounted Internet access, including for students from families with low incomes. / COURTESY COX COMMUNICATIONS
STAYING CONNECTED: Students from the West Broadway Middle School in Providence with Cox’s interim Regional Manager and Vice President of Human Resources Pipier Bewlay. Cox has partnered with a nonprofit to provide discounted Internet access, including for students from families with low incomes. / COURTESY COX COMMUNICATIONS

No longer considered a luxury but a necessity, high-speed Internet is being made more affordable for Rhode Islanders with low to moderate incomes through a program promoted by two communications companies.
Cox Communications, a broadband communications company with local offices in West Warwick, and Mobile Beacon, a wireless-service provider based in Johnston, has partnered with a nonprofit to provide discounted Internet access, including for students from families with low incomes.
The Connect2Compete program available through Cox offers high-speed Internet service for $10 a month for families who have at least one child who qualifies for the National School Lunch Program, according to EveryoneOn, the nonprofit organization that coordinates the initiative.
Tens of thousands of families could qualify for this across Rhode Island, where nearly half of all public school students qualified for a subsidized lunch in 2013-14.
Mobile Beacon had already been working with nonprofit organizations, libraries and schools to provide Internet service and last year paired up with EveryoneOn. Under its program, any household in its coverage area with an annual income of $35,000 or less can purchase high-speed Internet service for $10 a month, according to Katherine Messier, Mobile Beacon’s managing director.
The companies’ programs, although structured differently, are aimed at removing the so-called “digital divide,” in which some people in a community have high-speed Internet and a home-based computer, while others go without.
Students are exposed to computers at school, but increasingly are expected to use the Internet at home for school projects, including homework and online research. But the market-rate fees can be an economic hurdle for many families, said Sheila Dugan, chief marketing officer for EveryoneOn.
The average cost in the U.S. for basic, high-speed Internet is about $40 a month, she said, based on recent research. “Ten dollars makes it a lot more reasonable for families to put that in their budget,” she said. According to U.S. Census figures, 17 percent of Rhode Island households did not have home access to high-speed Internet in 2013. More than 80 percent of teachers, meanwhile, have reported their students lack sufficient access to digital tools needed to complete homework and other assignments, according to Connect2Compete.
Under the Cox program, a family has to have at least one child in grades K-12 who is eligible for the national free-or-reduced-lunch program. The household could not have already applied for Internet service within the last 90 days, and must have no outstanding bills with the company, and no unreturned equipment.
Once families are approved, they are able to purchase an Internet service or a computer.
People interested in purchasing a computer can go directly to everyoneon.org and enter their zip code to access a list of current offers.
Cox began participating in the program in 2012, and has enrolled more than 15,000 families in 18 states, according to Dana Alexander Nolfe, director of communications. The company does not release statewide enrollment numbers.
Mobile Beacon has signed on 2,500 subscribers nationally through the EveryoneOn initiative. In Rhode Island, the coverage area extends from Pawtucket to West Warwick, Messier said.
To promote the service, Cox has run radio ads, including at Spanish-speaking stations. The company also has placed public-service announcements on channels across its cable network, Nolfe said.
Verizon, which also provides Internet service in Rhode Island, does not participate in the Connect2Compete program but instead promotes educational philanthropy by providing schools with grants that can improve student learning in science, technology, engineering and math, said company spokesman Philip Santoro. The company offers $20-a-month Internet service, he said, making it affordable for all families. Across Rhode Island, 47 percent of students qualified for a reduced or free school meal under the National School Lunch Program last school year, according to the state Department of Education, based on family income and size. In some districts, such as Providence, Woonsocket, Central Falls and Pawtucket, the percentage of students that qualified was 75 percent or more.
Cox is committed to promoting the program to reach these families, Nolfe said.
In October, as part of its initiative to increase student access to online learning, Cox contributed six new computers to one of Providence’s public schools, West Broadway Middle School. The computers were placed in the school’s new library, according to Principal William Black, supplementing the room’s six existing computers.
The library computers are used daily by classes for researching subjects and for specialized learning programs. Teachers often make assignments that require students to use computers at home, Black said, although they recognize that not all families have access to the Internet at home and so make an effort to provide paper-based material as a backup.
“We have found that a lot of our students will have access to a device and the Internet,” Black said. “It’s not always a computer. It could be a phone.”
Some teachers make frequent use of digital technology in their lessons, he said. One of his fifth-grade teachers creates instructional videos that the students can access from home. The use of technology is a modern skill that students have to learn, he said.
“Really, any job you have, you’re going to be using a computer,” he said. “It’s a necessary skill for students to have, no matter what they want to do in life.” •

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