The moment has been a long time coming in some places. Superintendent Joshua Meyer, who leads the rural Boquet Valley Central School District in the Adirondacks, said his students have been waiting almost a decade for Wi-Fi in every classroom; a project wrapping up next month is expected to finally deliver it.
To get schools in New York to this point, it's taken years and cost billions in state and federal funding. Now, many are focused on improving their Internet speeds, ensuring students have access at home and shoring up cybersecurity for schools' digital information.
"It's refreshing to see, but that evolution took a lot of time because there was a lot of expense involved," said Mindy Fiscus, who serves on the board of the State Educational Technology Directors Association. "It did ramp up rather quickly during the pandemic. ... It really stepped us into a new digital age."
About 96 percent of New York schools reported having Wi-Fi in every classroom in the 2020-21 school year, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Education released last month. Interviews suggest that percentage is even higher now, thanks to further improvements and more funding.
The Times Union followed up with all of the districts that reported not having Wi-Fi in every classroom. Some districts said they made an error in their reporting and did have Wi-Fi in all instructional spaces that school year. Others said they've since improved their Internet to offer full wireless access on their campuses.
In 2020 and before, a lot of Schenectady City School buildings lacked wireless Internet access in some areas, said Ken McDermith, the district's chief technology officer. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, they fast-tracked getting laptops into the hands of students to attend classes and do school work from home.
"They had thousands and thousands of Chromebooks and wireless devices, but they didn't have wireless throughout the buildings," McDermith said, recalling the dilemma faced by his colleagues before he arrived in 2021. "Then they knew they had to build the wireless infrastructure. After COVID, we did have wireless in the buildings when the kids returned."
Christopher J. Pellettieri, superintendent of Sachem Central School District, which serves about 12,000 students on Long Island, said his district began rolling out Wi-Fi to schools in the 2020-21 school year, first at the high schools, then middle, secondary and elementary schools. By September 2022, all classrooms had Wi-Fi and all students had Chromebooks.
"Prior to 2020, the district did not have Wi-Fi available in all areas as a result of several contributing factors, including the size of the district (18 buildings), securing funding and infrastructure issues," Pellettieri said.
Access to consistent Wi-Fi Internet means learning and teaching looks different in schools.
Teachers are using more online instructional materials and collecting and grading assignments through Google Classroom, McDermith said.
"It transforms it from having a teacher-centered instruction model where now you can provide access to resources and have the kids do a lot more independent learning," McDermith said.
In elementary school, students learn to manipulate a computer and prepare for state testing on it, Meyer said. In middle and high schools, students are doing lessons and group work on their computers, instead of teachers distributing paper worksheets, packets and textbooks.
"Even over the past couple of years, they were trying to do that but always needed a back up plan," Meyer said. "It was a problem if not an inconvenience."
The data from the U.S. Department of Education is a new window into Wi-Fi access in schools; all schools haven't been mandated to answer this question before.
Likewise, 95 percent of New York schools said they had a fiber optic Internet connection in 2020-21, a type of connection known for faster service, the U.S. Department of Education data showed.
The data puts New York schools slightly above the national average.
"Approximately 93 percent of schools reported having Internet connection and 95 percent of schools reported having Wi-Fi access in every classroom (nationally)," said Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary at the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. "About 91,700 public schools provide a total of about 47 million Wi-Fi-enabled devices."
While some states had an even higher percentage of schools with Internet access than New York, others fared worse. Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia reported that 99 percent or more of their schools were connected to the Internet in 2020-21, according to U.S. Department of Education data. The states reporting the lowest percentage of schools connected to the Internet were Florida, at 66 percent, and Alaska, at 52 percent.
The collection of the data during the pandemic could have an effect on some of the numbers reported, the department warned.
The New York State Education Department does not collect data on Internet access and Wi-Fi in schools, spokesman J.P. O'Hare said. The state does have data from surveys of parents conducted by schools on home Internet access and computers. The data from 2022 shows 82 percent of respondents said their school issued their student a device, like a laptop, for use during the school year, and 97 percent reported having Internet in their home. But the state only received responses for about one in three students.
While some areas still have a ways to go, the numbers demonstrate significant progress in access to the Internet in schools. In 1996, only 14 percent of K-12 classrooms had access to the Internet, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
In 2013, President Barack Obama set a goal of having 99 percent of schools connected to the Internet through high-speed broadband and wireless within five years. Schools are still working to get there, five years after Obama's target, but the data suggests they are very close.
There are still places in the country where placing fiber-optic networks is extremely challenging due to the rural landscape, rules in National Parks and the location of mountains, Fiscus said. At times, schools are the only places in a community that can afford high-speed Internet due to significant federal funding that supports them.
The backbone of school Internet expansion has been the Federal Communication Commission's E-Rate program, which has distributed tens of billions of dollars to schools and libraries to pay for Internet infrastructure since the 1990s. E-rate subsidizes the cost of Internet and hardware for schools, providing deep discounts especially for those serving poor students.
Well over 90 percent of U.S. schools benefit from E-rate, according to Brian Stephens, director of Stakeholder Engagement for Funds for Learning, an organization that consults to help schools access the program.
"It is very rare that we hear about a school district that doesn't have access to Internet," he said. "More common is: is it really adequate to support modern learning?"
E-rate, and the group of similar programs it's part of, are funded through a surcharge on landline and cellphone bills. They now face legal challenges due to that funding mechanism, leaving congressional supporters concerned about their future.
The state has also funded Internet improvements at schools through the Smart Schools Bond Act, which was passed in 2014 to invest $2 billion in improving educational technology and infrastructure. Every district gets a slice of that money, and the state is still distributing it.
"The review board has approved just under $1.8 billion in plans," said Christina Coughlin, chief financial officer for the New York State Education Department. "The state hasn't paid out that much yet because a lot of the work is still in progress."
Meyer, who was the superintendent for Westport public schools before the merged with neighboring Elizabethtown to form Boquet Valley, said he's been trying to get his students Wi-Fi Internet access for years, but in a rural district with financial struggles, it was too expensive. He sought state funds from Smart Schools since 2015, but it was a "very long and slow process," that made them to reapply multiple times, he recounted. Eventually, they secured the state money and chipped in some local funds and federal dollars from E-Rate.
McDermith, Schenectady's chief technology officer, said his district funded their Wi-Fi and Internet improvements mostly through federal COVID-19 relief funds for schools, although they considered E-rate and Smart Schools funding. He estimates they spent about $900,000.
"There has been plenty of money for school districts to be able to address this issue during the pandemic," he said. But he suggested there is concern about funding for future maintenance and upkeep for the systems.
Now equipped with Internet and computers for students, many schools are now wrestling with a final challenge: how to ensure all students have Internet at home to do their homework. The problem was particularly exposed during the pandemic when many schools offered remote learning online and without Internet, students were unable to join. Some schools have distributed mobile hotspots. The E-rate program will soon allow schools to use funds to put Wi-Fi on buses, too.
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