Newfield continues efforts to keep students connected

As mentioned in previous articles, in Newfield, there are significant financial and location barriers to internet access, and it’s something the town and school district have been working to resolve, especially during the pandemic. Sunny Miller, Newfield Central School District’s director of technology and professional development, said it is a social justice matter.

“Where you live shouldn’t affect your ability to have access to instruction or education or anything you need because you live in a rural area. It’s crazy how many kids don’t have internet. It’s just unreal, the disadvantage those students have,” she said. “Folks talk about learning loss because of the pandemic. Schools like ours have had learning loss for decades. Learning loss is not new for a lot of kids. It is an age-old issue people are more keenly aware of because of the pandemic. It is such a large problem. The fix is going to take a lot of heavy lifting.”

Miller said it is hard to say how many Newfield students lack internet access.

“It’s hard to determine because we’re in the middle of this pandemic,” she said. “Some of our students chose to learn from home, and some are medically fragile and can’t report to the building.”

A survey issued by the FCC asking people if they had access to the internet was problematic because it was an online survey. So, too, is the option for people to receive financial assistance to pay for service through the federal emergency broadband benefit.

“It’s all online, so if you don’t have internet, you can’t sign up,” Miller said, adding that the school district also put together a survey that wasn’t able to capture a full picture. “At that time, students didn’t have their own devices. Filling out an online survey without a computer or internet is really difficult.”

This past fall, Miller applied for a grant to pay for 150 hotspots for students who don’t have internet access. But hotspots are only effective when they can work off a cell phone signal.

“There are a large portion of them out in the field, but a lot of them don’t work because the students can’t get a signal,” she said.

In addition to cell signal strength, hotspots can be problematic when a cell phone provider opts to slow down a connection after a certain level of data is used.

“Some carriers throttle your hotspot signal. When talking to those companies, we explained that if there is a household with five kids all trying to use the hotspot for access, that is a problem,” Miller said. “Throttling can’t be a part of the hotspot service. With T-Mobile hotspots, that, [throttling the connection to slow speeds], is not the case.”

And if students can utilize a hotspot, another issue can arise — paying for a cell phone and the data used to work off the signal.

“Once you deploy a hotspot, you have to pay for data — you have to have a cell phone,” Miller said. “For lots of families in Newfield — we’re the poorest school district in the county — a lot of parents don’t have the funds, and so, the students don’t have access. It’s a super concerning issue.”

Last school year, a grant and private funder paid for unlimited service for all the district’s hotspots. Newfield has applied for a federal grant to cover those costs for the coming school year.

Newfield faced another challenge during the pandemic as it worked to ensure students had access to the resources they needed to learn — not enough devices.

“We were not a 1-to-1 district. Our students did not have their own devices, so that was another thing we had to work through,” Miller said. “On top of the pandemic, on top of no internet, on top of district finances, we had to shift to 1-to-1.”

While the district ordered Chromebooks to meet students’ needs, she said the pandemic created a supply issue that meant that order was not fulfilled quickly. To manage the technology deficit, Miller said they got a helping hand from Groton, which sent 100 of its Chromebooks to Newfield.

“It was such an amazing thing they did,” she said, crediting Superintendent Eric Hartz with getting Newfield what it needed. “It’s humbling to be a first-year superintendent and go to the superintendents’ table and ask, ‘Does anyone have any devices?’ And then, for another superintendent to say, ‘We’ve got your back.’ I have no idea what we would have done without those 100 Chromebooks. I really have no idea.”

The district has received all the Chromebooks it had ordered and has enough to outfit all second- through 12th-graders with devices. If it receives the federal grant for which it has applied, Newfield will buy enough devices for students in all grade levels to have one.

“All the devices we purchased last year came from the Smart Schools Bond Act money, so it wasn’t a [local] cost to taxpayers,” Miller said. “It was super helpful to have those funds available. This year, we’re hoping to finish it out with the FCC grant.”

She has talked with local officials, including Newfield Town Supervisor Mike Allinger, outgoing Tompkins County Legislator Dave McKenna and Randy Brown — who is running for McKenna’s seat, to try to strategize how the school district can overcome its lack of internet access.

“Newfield has the worst internet in the county. A lot of our folks don’t have internet. It’s not a poverty thing; it’s all walks of life and lots of different constituents,” Miller said. “Some of the companies will actually tell you, ‘We’re not interested in providing access because we don’t have enough paying customers there.’”

To solve the issue, Miller said, several options are being considered. She said the best solution would be getting fiber optic service run to every home in town.

“But when you’re laying fiber at an estimated $41,000 per mile, you have to have companies willing to come build the infrastructure and you have to have the government willing to pay the companies to do it,” Miller said. “I don’t think we’re anywhere near that. It’s going to take years to build that. The FCC has given subsidies and offered subsidies [to lay fiber optic cable], but companies have not done that and the FCC has not followed up. The pandemic caught everyone unaware, supposedly, but this has been going on for years.”

She said a point-to-point network solution also was investigated, but a contractor came in and told them it wouldn’t work in Newfield. The district is hoping to obtain funding for a Starlink satellite, produced by Elon Musk and aimed at helping people with difficulty getting internet access to get online. If successful, Miller said, grant funds would pay for a satellite, necessary equipment to use the service and a month’s worth of satellite coverage for Newfield families.

“If we were able to get a satellite, if we were able to get satellites to provide signals to homes, then families can get online to sign up for the emergency broadband benefit and get $50 off their bill,” Miller said. “With satellites, you would have the same issues [with weather potentially affecting service], but it might be a short-term balm for the issue.”

The school district has also installed a wireless access point in the school parking lot.

“So, that’s available, but if you don’t have wheels or a way to get here, you can’t use it,” Miller said.

Newfield also is hoping to win a federal grant that will allow it to install Wi-Fi service on 12 buses.

“If we’re in dire straits and need to park the buses in community locations, we could lock the buses and students could use the signal to access the internet,” Miller said. “If we end up in a remote situation, we don’t know how that will work, but it’s better than having no kind of connection at all.”

Another issue, Miller noted, is that with these grants, the district would have to pay first and then be reimbursed by the federal government.

“Newfield doesn’t have the money to pay upfront expenses,” she said. “All the vendors on our FCC grant had to agree to invoice the federal government directly.”

She is hoping to start working with students to make their voices heard because “they are the ones suffering the learning loss.”

“Someone at the FCC may not understand what it’s like for a student in Newfield, someone who was getting paper handouts because they didn’t have access,” Miller said. “Students being able to say, ‘we deserve internet,’ may make a difference. It should be like water and electricity. This is an essential service. Everyone should have access to high-quality internet that works. It shouldn’t be, if you can pay for internet, you can have it.”

Teamwork has been the key, Miller said, for the district as it works through its technology challenges.

“My whole team, the entire administration team have all been searching for what could work and how we can make this work,” she said. “Our teachers have been amazing. It’s a lot of work, but our kids are worth it.”

Have Newfield news to share? Contact Rob Montana at rob.j.montana@gmail.com.