The Arkansas Legislature will send a consultant to every school district in the state to conduct a more comprehensive and updated survey of schools' high-speed Internet connection needs.

The Executive Committee of the Arkansas Legislative Council approved a proposal for the study Thursday. The committee members hope to draft and advertise a request for consultant proposals by Labor Day.

The study, which is estimated to cost between $100,000 and $200,000, follows a separate $71,500 study of school broadband Internet needs approved by the Legislature in July. That study also will be conducted by an outside group.

"Even though the first study was approved and is moving forward, there were some members who still had concerns and questions about the data," said Rep. Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, the House speaker-elect. "We thought the prudent course would be to get reliable information before the session, before we go down that road and spend millions of dollars on the broadband infrastructure."

The lack of bandwidth is starting to cause problems for schools as more standardized tests are offered only online. Act 1280 of 2013, passed by the Arkansas Legislature, also requires every school to provide at least one interactive online course, beginning this fall. Smaller, rural districts report they often struggle, due to their location and size, to obtain adequate bandwidth.

Two separate committees -- the Quality Digital Learning Study committee and FASTER Arkansas -- have made recommendations about how to increase schools' broadband access. They point to an Arkansas Department of Education survey that says sufficient broadband Internet access is high-priced and not readily available to all districts.

But some private Internet service providers disagree: They say the survey was incomplete and misleading.

Gillam proposed the second study to try to find common ground and said both sides agreed it was necessary.

"So far nobody has come forward with opposition that I'm aware of," Gillam said. "This was a win-win proposal for everyone around to come up with some baseline that could be agreed upon to start the conversation fresh."

Gillam said the Bureau of Legislative Research staff will draft the parameters of the study and the contract requirements before the Arkansas Legislative Council's meeting early next month. He said the proposal approved Thursday will include more in-depth information than the study currently being conducted by Picus Odden & Associates as part of the state's mandated biennial educational adequacy study.

The newest proposal would ask a consultant to find out how much Internet capacity each school and each district currently has, what infrastructure is available for expansion, what technological equipment they have, and what they pay for Internet access.

"There are a lot of schools that have fiber run to them for broadband access, but they can't maximize on that because they still have dial-up modems," Gillam said.

The first study aims to determine how much needs to be spent per student to obtain adequate Internet access throughout the state. Gillam said members wanted the second study to make sure that they get to see that breakdown and know the information is recent and in the same format so it can be compared easily.

That study is being done as part of the biennial adequacy report and is due back to the Education Committee by mid-September. Because of that short time frame, some legislators were more comfortable with the idea of the second study as well.

Gillam said it will take a few months to visit all 238 public school districts and complete the second survey. But he anticipated the study to be complete by Dec. 1.

Calls to a spokesman and members of FASTER Arkansas -- a committee appointed by the governor to study broadband access -- were not returned Friday.

Jordan Johnson, a spokesman for the Arkansas Broadband Coalition for Kids, which has members from various service providers across the state, said the group is looking forward to seeing what the consultant finds. The group has complained about the accuracy of the studies conducted by the Department of Education.

"While I'm not aware of the study, I believe the members of the coalition will be encouraged to hear about it, and we look forward to reviewing the findings," he said.

Metro on 08/09/2014