[1st-mile-nm] Farmington - Digital Divide Story

[Richard Lowenberg]

One small college tackles the growing digital divide

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/one-small-college-tackles-the-growing-digital-divide/article_ddbea9ea-0e79-55f1-ac47-75e476934a48.html

Posted: Sunday, October 9, 2016 11:30 pm | Updated: 12:08 am, Mon Oct 
10, 2016.
By Leah Todd, Solutions Journalism Network

FARMINGTON — Completing homework assignments is tougher for Aaliyah 
Juanico, 14, than it is for other kids at Farmington High School. Unlike 
90 percent of her peers, Juanico doesn’t have an internet connection at 
home.

Juanico can access the internet on her cellphone, but she says it’s a 
slow connection at her house an hour from town. She also fears using too 
much cellular data, which can slap her family with a fee. Sometimes, 
Juanico’s parents drive her to a library or McDonald’s. Though that 
approach usually works, it’s hardly ideal.

“It’s very stressful at times,” Juanico said. “Because sometimes we 
don’t have gas in the car. And I have to explain to my teachers why I 
can’t get the assignment done.”

Roughly 1 in 10 students in the Farmington Municipal Schools lacks 
internet access at home, according to a survey of sixth- through 
12th-graders earlier this year. Teachers say the real figure is likely 
even higher. That’s a problem for a school district that requires 
students to complete online exercises and turn in homework 
electronically.

It’s also an issue that disproportionately affects students whose 
families can’t afford the internet — a concern in Farmington, where half 
the students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. And the lack of 
connectivity isn’t just a problem for schools. Nationally, home 
broadband in rural areas lags behind urban and suburban centers, a 
discouraging reality that can stifle economic development and 
employment.

Fortunately for Juanico and other Farmington residents, one potential 
solution is happening just across town.

It comes courtesy of Christopher Schipper, director of the San Juan 
College library. For years, Schipper watched students migrate from their 
spots in the college library to hallways and stairwells just outside 
once the library closed — an attempt to squeeze a little more work out 
of the free campus internet before returning home for the night.

A simple idea occurred to him: Why can’t these students take a little 
piece of the internet home with them?

Schipper had read about the New York City Library’s wireless hotspot 
program, which, starting in 2014, used a $1 million donation from Google 
and several grants to offer 10,000 free wireless hotspots for families 
for an entire school year. The devices, hardly larger than a pack of 
playing cards, are often available for free with a contract from major 
cellular companies, and can connect to the internet anyplace with 
cellphone reception.

Last year, inspired by New York’s success, Schipper purchased 10 
hotspots, using $5,000 from the college foundation’s endowment.

“The need is consistent and it’s strong,” Schipper said. Typically, he 
said, there’s a waiting list of 10 to 15 people who want to check out 
one of his hotspots for a week at a time. “It’s not perfect. If it were 
perfect, we’d be loaning these out for an entire semester, and we’d have 
100 of them or more.”

Schipper this year added five more devices and increased the amount of 
data each student can use tenfold. He’s received inquiries from a rural 
librarian in Florida and a library in Iowa that want to try the 
approach.

“It’s woefully inadequate,” Schipper said of his program. “But we do 
what we can. It’s a social justice issue. I don’t know how else to think 
about it.”

Although Schipper’s program is helping Farmington’s college students, 
bigger connectivity solutions are a necessity for America’s small towns. 
Internet connections are often slower and more expensive in rural areas, 
in part because it’s so expensive to run high-speed lines to remote 
communities. And costs can vary wildly. According to a 2015 analysis by 
the state Public School Facilities Authority, the monthly rates schools 
pay for internet access run from as little as $1.35 per megabit per 
second to as much as $3,780. Federal and state initiatives have tried to 
incentivize infrastructure development, especially in rural communities, 
but in places such as Farmington upgrades are still a long way off.

Schools nationwide have adapted. A district in Arizona partnered with 
businesses to install Wi-Fi on school buses. Another district in 
Washington built wireless Iinternet kiosks in public housing.
In Farmington, each student in grades 6-12 receives a laptop. But the 
devices don’t help much if students can’t access the academic sites and 
research links the school increasingly relies on.
Despite these challenges, the Farmington school district hasn’t 
seriously considered sending the devices home with students. That’s 
partly because even the hotspots are an imperfect solution. They only 
work in places with adequate cellphone reception. Plus, the district 
isn’t exactly flush with cash. It started the year in a $4.2 million 
deficit, with more cuts pending.

Instead, the district is focused on bringing decent internet to school 
facilities, said Charles Thacker, the district’s executive director of 
technology. Thacker is also working on a bigger vision. He wants 
wireless hotspots installed throughout the city, not just at the 
schools. That will take money, new infrastructure and a level of 
cooperation between the city, county and private industry that other 
cities have managed, but that has eluded Farmington so far. In fact, 
Farmington ranked last in a survey of American cities that measured 
high-speed internet use in 2013.

Until better wireless access comes to Farmington, students will continue 
to improvise. Charity Roy, a ninth-grader whose family doesn’t have 
broadband, will continue to leave open the website windows she thinks 
she will need before she leaves school each day. Teachers will continue 
to give Zechariah Ancira Buckway, a seventh-grader, more time on 
assignments because they know his family doesn’t have internet access at 
home.

And Aaliyah Juanico will hop from McDonald’s to the library when she 
can. She’ll continue spending afternoons at the Farmington Boys and 
Girls Clubs building, where she waits until her parents get off work, 
and where the internet is free.



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Richard Lowenberg, Executive Director
1st-Mile Institute     505-603-5200
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504,
rl at 1st-mile.org     www.1st-mile.org
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