Districts Equipping School Buses With WiFi

Students in the Vail school district in Arizona use laptops during their bus rides to and from school. The district hopes to equip all 20 of its high school buses with WiFi.

—Courtesy of the Vail (Ariz.) School District

Students can spend hours working on their laptops during long bus rides.

By Ian Quillen

It’s one thing to put school-issued laptops into the hands of students who live in remote villages or on vast ranches.

Getting those students online at home is quite another.

That’s why Matt Federoff, the chief information officer of the 10,000-student Vail district in rural southern Arizona, is attempting to equip all 20 of the district’s high school buses with WiFi routers at a cost of approximately $1,000 per vehicle. With more than 1,000 students at two of the schools using school-issued laptops—and many of them living beyond the reach of traditional broadband Internet providers—it’s the most practical way to provide them with time and means to...