Rating the E-rate

By Andrew Trotter

Westfield, Wis.

Students and teachers in this rural Wisconsin town have come to rely on the Internet in a dozen different ways—from researching papers and taking virtual field trips to communicating by e-mail and pulling lesson plans off the Web.

But district officials say they wouldn't have been able to deliver this global network to their classrooms for at least another two years were it not for the E-rate. The federal subsidy has lowered the cost of acquiring modern communications services for thousands of schools and libraries nationwide in the first three years of the program's existence.

"It's had a great impact within our school system, not only in terms of the telecommunications end, but in paying for wiring our classrooms," says Fredrick E. Postuma, Westfield's technology coordinator and chief technology planner.

Since 1998, the 1,400-student district has used its $175,815 in E-rate support to help pay for the cables, communications hubs, and switches that now ferry data between school buildings. The subsidy has also saved Westfield thousands of dollars on Internet and telephone charges—a big help in a district whose five schools are scattered across 250 square miles...