A $40 million project years in the making, Pharr's broadband undertaking is already slated to feature about 398 miles of fiber optic cable and 24,000 residential and business accounts. The city touts it as a landmark success.
Successful negotiations between the school district and the city could mean more cable — and more affordable, high-speed Internet — headed in the direction of San Juan and Alamo.
"We are able to move into territory that is in partnership with us," Pharr Mayor Ambrosio Hernandez told the board Wednesday. "In this case it would be the geographical area of PSJA. So you would be driving that force — and the demographics, or geographical footprint — you would be driving it, so we would be following your lead. Wherever your students are."
PSJA Board President Cynthia Gutierrez noted that the project would also likely fuel applications for more grants and funding for broadband expansion in the area.
"We want to grow as a region," she said. "At times we become too closed down on our own entities and we forget that we can be that channel that allows all the other surrounding cities, school districts, businesses to connect and bridge all those gaps that are not being met."
Cynthia Garza-Reyes, director of external relations for the city, said gaps are already being bridged in Pharr. The project is completely built in South Pharr and several subdivisions are signing on, she said. Central Pharr is about 90 percent done with some homes connected while North Pharr is about 10 percent constructed.
The city describes the project as a way to provide residents with "blazing fast fiber Internet and the next generation of WiFi technology that better connects all of the devices in your home or business" all at an affordable price. Lower end Internet speeds start at $25 a month.
The obvious appeal for the school district is the infrastructure's prospect of bridging the digital divide. A larger district with some resources at its disposal, PSJA could afford to be innovative when the pandemic shuttered classrooms.
At one point the district spent about $155,000 to outfit a fleet of buses with hotspots, using them to deliver WiFi to students in areas in need of Internet. It's not clear how effective that program was, and the district was occasionally plagued by supply chain issues and outages. "As much as our district tried every which way to provide that necessary service when we were going through virtual learning, we still had some issues with dropped services," Trustee Carlos Villegas said Wednesday. "The hotspots were not working in some areas, so it was a disservice to our kids. We tried with what we had."
Concrete details in Wednesday's meeting about how that prospective partnership may look or a timeline for it were scant. City representatives largely focused on the project's successes so far.
Trustees praised the program, especially its potential benefits for students and staff. Hernandez agreed with that assessment, but said the impact of a successful partnership would likely go beyond it.
"You guys are doing it for your children, you're doing it for your students. But what you don't realize is that you're about to become an economic engine for those communities, whether you see it or not," he said. "Businesses are looking for high speed Internet, they're looking for people with IT resource education. Well that's exactly what you're about to go into...so you're about to change cities as a whole simply on the premise that you want to do what's best for your students."
The November elections may have, to some degree, paved the way for the district moving toward the project. In May, Gutierrez and Villegas both suggested they were interested in partnering with the city on broadband, but two trustees in the former majority expressed concern over such a partnership.
Voters ejected those two trustees in the November board election, and trustees Jorge and Jesse Zambrano — traditionally enemies of Gutierrez and Villegas — did not attend Wednesday's meeting, and it's not clear where they stand on the project.
The city's broadband project has also been noticed by education leaders outside the PSJA area. Miles away from Pharr, trustees at Edinburg CISD were holding a board meeting of their own Wednesday evening, discussing hotspots.
Trustee Xavier Salinas said he'd heard about $25 dollar broadband Internet just down the road.
"Do we have any schools that are having Pharr city limits?" he said. "Because it might be a better option to see if ... we can buy the service from the fiber that's right next door to us."
Superintendent Mario Salinas said a pilot program is underway.
©2022 The Monitor (McAllen, Texas). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
