Education Beneficiary Groups United in Opposition to FCC E-rate Plan

While FCC officials have cited numerous groups that also support the plan (WID June 25 p6), Mary Kusler, director-government relations at NEA, told us the beneficiary community is almost completely opposed to the plan as proposed by Wheeler. “It’s not just NEA,” she said. “It’s also the school superintendents and the school boards association,” she said. “It’s also the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Catholic Educational[al] Association.”

E-rate has worked well for 18 years, since it was created as part of Telecom Act in 1996, Kusler said. Several of the commissioners appear to understand the groups’ objections, she said. But the FCC as a whole is ignoring the concerns the groups have raised, she said. “It’s not that they're not meeting with us,” Kusler said. “They're meeting with us, but after all of our meetings ... we just don’t feel like they hear what we are saying."

"The entire beneficiary community is troubled by this proposal,” said Noelle Ellerson, associate executive director at AASA, the School Superintendents Association. “It’s really hard to take seriously a conversation about Wi-Fi for schools when the school groups are telling them it won’t work, that it’s not sustainable.” Ellerson told us it’s very unusual for all the beneficiary groups to be united on a single issue, as they are on E-rate.

Thirteen different educational groups, including NEA, AFT and AASA, signed a June 20 letter to members of the FCC, not yet posted by the commission, raising a red flag about the proposed order. “With a united voice, we write to express our strong concerns with proposed changes we believe will only dilute an already over-subscribed E-rate Program by threatening the program’s sustainability and historically successful track record and failing to meet the needs of urban, rural and low-density populated areas,” the groups said.

The letter raises concerns that the FCC will have to take money from other parts of the program to reinvest $5 billion in Wi-Fi in the schools. While money is set aside for the first two years, the letter questions what will happen in years three to five. The letter also questions a proposal to change the existing funding structure to a per-pupil formula allocation for schools. The proposal assumes “one-size-fits-all” costs, no matter how big a school is and whether it’s a rural, suburban or urban area, the groups said. The proposed per-pupil formula “grossly oversimplifies the variance in costs and purchasing power,” the groups said.

Providing support for connectivity is “crucial” and the FCC’s proposal is a “step in the right direction,” said John Harrington, CEO of Funds for Learning, which provides E-rate compliance support. The greatest need is for additional funding and for various education groups to propose “concrete” reforms for the program, Harrington said. “We do have 17 years of data to support the fact that there is greater need for support in schools and libraries than the program is currently providing,” he said.

The main disagreement between Wheeler and the education groups appears to be timing, said a former top FCC official who doesn’t represent clients on E-rate. The educational groups say “the most important thing is putting new money in the program,” the former official said. Wheeler “has consistently said first we modernize and upgrade the program and then we step back and say ‘Is there a need for new money’ and if so let’s do that.”

"The chairman has shown no desire to necessarily please the Democratic base, whether it be net neutrality or now E-rate,” said a former FCC spectrum official who doesn’t represents any clients involved in the E-rate discussions.

Libraries Also Voice Concerns

Libraries are also raising concerns. The draft E-rate order (WID June 26 p11) would hurt libraries in dense urban areas in favor of helping larger suburban ones, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, who now represents the Urban Libraries Council, told us. The proposal would change the formula that determines how much of the costs for libraries are covered by the program, he said. Schools would continue to be funded based on the proportion of students eligible for free and reduced price lunches. Funding for libraries would be based on the square footage of the buildings, he said. “We want to be treated the same as schools, based on human measurements. Square footage is a terrible measure,” he said. Urban libraries are “crowded and cramped. There’s a small square footage per person, as opposed to large, luxurious, unoccupied, spacious, suburban libraries.”

The formula, if adopted, could bring some benefits, said Marijke Visser, American Library Association’s assistant director in the Office for Information Technology Policy. Libraries are required to report their square footage to the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services and easily would be able to report it to the FCC, she said. More money should be provided for connections to libraries, in addition to the increased funding proposed for connections within libraries, she said. ULC represents many of the nation’s largest libraries, Hundt said. The ALA represents libraries and librarians both in and outside urban areas, Visser said.

The proposal drew criticism from Bright House Networks, which in an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1jsavnm) Thursday told FCC staff the draft order would mean only 13 percent of the nation’s K-12 students would benefit from E-rate funding for Wi-Fi equipment or Wi-Fi services in the next two years. Under the draft, funds would continue to be appropriated under the current discount priority system. The facilities eligible for the highest discounts would have priority to receive the funding each year. “If a large proportion of high-discount schools chose to take all their funding up front, they could potentially claim the entire $1 billion provided for the first year, and most likely, the entire $1 billion provided in the second year,” the filing said, resulting in “very little funding remaining to support other schools in the first two years.”