The modern school is extremely reliant on the internet.
It’s not just the laptops and tablets teachers and students use. Even before people arrive in the building, there are already dozens of behind-the-scenes school operation systems that are connecting to the internet, from bus GPS routing and tracking, to HVAC and energy management, to electronic door access controls and security systems.
“The network has become the school’s life safety system,” said Stacy Hawthorne, the board chair for the Consortium for School Networking, a membership organization representing K-12 technology leaders, during a Sept. 9 town hall event about the federal E-rate program. “This is not an amenity. It’s the thing that you’re counting on when it matters the most.”
For these internet-enabled systems to work, schools need reliable broadband connectivity, she said. For decades, much of the funding for that has come from the $3 billion E-rate program, which was established in 1996 to help schools and libraries get connectivity at discounted rates.
But now, the Federal Communications Commission is launching a review of the program, in part, it said, to address concerns about kids’ excessive screen time and technology use in school.
Conversations around screen time are important but they shouldn’t be part of the E-rate review, E-rate advocates said. Screen time is a curriculum decision, while the FCC should be focused on connectivity and access issues, they said.
In the FCC’s notice of proposed rulemaking published in the Federal Register on Aug. 14, the agency asked for public comment on whether the E-rate program should be reexamined, including:
- Whether E-rate funds are being spent appropriately and efficiently;
- How to ensure the program advances student learning while protecting students’ online safety;
- Whether the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act sufficiently protects students from inappropriate and harmful online content;
- What other policies should be considered for assessing how screen time affects students; and
- Whether there will be an impact on schools’ and libraries’ ability to afford these broadband services if the E-rate program was terminated or limited.
Education organizations are concerned that this review could result in the end of the E-rate program.
At the town hall hosted by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, advocates explained why the E-rate program is essential to schools and urged educators to submit comments to the FCC to protect the program.
“The internet is as functional for opening schools as the doors itself,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, the chief advocacy and governance officer for AASA. “E-rate represents the fifth largest stream of federal funding in our nation’s schools and is the sole federal technology program. It has transformed educational opportunity and is without hesitation the backbone to our district operations and those of our libraries.”
Across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and major U.S. territories, schools and libraries received more than $13 billion from the E-rate program between 2021 and 2025, according to data provided by the Schools, Health, and Libraries Broadband Coalition, a nonprofit advocating affordable, high-speed broadband.
“If funding goes away, it would blow a hole in the budgets of schools and libraries that could least afford to pay for the internet access that they require,” said Joey Wender, the executive director of the Schools, Health, and Libraries Broadband Coalition.
School districts that would ‘suffer the most’ if the E-rate goes away
The needier your community, the higher the level of poverty in your community, the greater the discount you receive from the E-rate program, Wender said.
“So, if E-rate goes away, it’s those communities that suffer the most,” he said.
The Aldine Independent school district in Houston is among those communities that could suffer the most if E-rate goes away, said LaTonya Goffney, the district superintendent and the board president of AASA. (Goffney serves on the board of trustees for Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit publisher of Education Week. Board members do not shape the content of the journalism.)
Almost all of Aldine’s 50,000 students are economically disadvantaged and 100% of its schools are eligible for federal Title I funding, Goffney said.
In the past five years, Aldine received about $11 million from E-rate, Goffney said. The funding provided fiber internet infrastructure that supports teaching, learning, and school operations.
“Internet connectivity is not a one-time purchase,” Goffney said. “It is a continuous utility.”
If the E-rate funding is terminated or limited, Aldine would face “an immediate and significant budget shortfall, and that means millions of dollars would have to be redirected from somewhere else in our budget,” she said.
That could mean fewer teachers, larger class sizes, and fewer programs and opportunities for children “that give them a reason to love coming to school,” she added.
The proposed rulemaking aims to “empower parents,” strengthen the program’s integrity, streamline administration, and better protect children using services subsidized by the E-rate program, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement announcing the review.
It’s also part of his “top-to-bottom” evaluation of the E-rate program, Carr said.
During Carr’s leadership, the FCC has voted to remove school bus Wi-Fi and internet hotspots from the program’s eligible services list, both of which were added under former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Rosenworcel argued the expansion would help close the “homework gap” for students, while Carr called the expansion unlawful.
Comments about the FCC’s proposed rulemaking on E-rate are due by Oct. 13. FCC’s instructions for commenting are found here.
“E-rate is not optional technology; it is essential infrastructure for America’s public schools,” Goffney said.
