Beebe: Link schools to network

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe advocated Friday that the Legislature change the law to allow school districts to use the statewide broadband network that supplies high-speed Internet access to public universities and two-year colleges.

In a news release Friday afternoon, Beebe said that he waited to support the move until the Arkansas Board of Education had a chance to review and adopt the Quality Digital Learning Study, which was released in April.

The Education Board voted to adopt the study at its meeting Friday, said Arkansas Commissioner of Education Tom Kimbrell.

Beebe said in his written statement that he specifically supports the study's recommendation to amend Act 1050 of 2011, which excluded the state's K-12 schools from accessing the Arkansas Research Education Optical Network known as ARE-ON.

"We thought the timing was right. It's been something we've been hearing about and looking at for months," Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said.

DeCample was unsure of the next step in getting the Legislature to act on the proposal.

"Whether it's [in a special session] or in the next session, the governor wanted to get word out about it," he said.

At the end of the 2013 session, the Legislature directed a group of educators, private industry officials and others to perform the study with the help of the Arkansas Department of Education.

The study recommended that the state manage a statewide broadband system for the K-12 schools, adopt federal recommendations for the amount of bandwidth required per student and allow school districts access to ARE-ON.

ARE-ON is a public-private partnership that connects the state's public universities, two-year colleges, university libraries and teaching hospitals with a system of high-capacity fiber optic cables that provide an enormous amount of bandwidth.

The amount of bandwidth available determines how fast information can travel on the Internet. Less bandwidth might mean longer times for websites to load, interrupted data transfers, a harder time using video or live-streaming conversations -- all of which are used in classroom settings.

The study came as the need for increased broadband capabilities at school districts has ramped up. The Legislature mandated through Act 1280 of 2013 that every district offer at least one online class starting in September.

School districts also went through rigorous test runs to see if they have enough capacity for students to take the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, exam, which will move to an entirely online format during testing this spring.

The study's recommendations riled private Internet providers, which have provided countertestimony to the House and Senate education committees over the past two months. Much of the fiber optic cable that makes up ARE-ON is owned by those providers and rented to the state for a set price under a long-term contract.

The providers argue that allowing the school districts to connect to ARE-ON would take away their private customers -- the school districts -- and force the companies that own the cable to provide service to the schools through the state rental price -- essentially putting the companies in direct competition with the state.

"The providers and others have proven and shown time and again that the [digital learning] study is based on bad data," said Jordan Johnson, spokesman for the Arkansas Broadband Coalition for Kids, which is made up of private service providers.

"Based on ARE-ON's own assessment, it cost hundreds of millions of dollars to connect the two-year colleges. The private providers have been investing hundreds of millions of dollars in expanding broadband throughout the state. We all believe this is a very important issue, but in most cases we believe the accessibility is already at the doorstep of virtually every school."

Johnson said providers raised a lot of concerns about the accuracy of the data on which the study recommendations are based, including the number of school districts that reported not having access to the Internet.

Several officials said their companies had cable readily available or close to the districts named in the study, which was based on a survey conducted by the Department of Education and compiled in December.

Almost 50 of the state's 238 public school districts did not answer the survey. Calls to some of the districts on the bottom of the list in terms of access to broadband showed some school officials had misunderstood what they should be reporting on the questionnaire, and the information was outdated for a handful of other districts that had since bolstered their bandwidth.

Providers said they believe that the state would need to do more than just change the law in order to connect districts to ARE-ON. The colleges and universities that currently use the network had to be accepted as members by the ARE-ON board of directors and had to pay a membership fee in the neighborhood of $50,000.

It was unclear during testimony over the past few months if that fee would be charged to individual school districts. It also was unclear whether the contract between the private providers that own the cable and the state agency that manages it would allow the districts to sign on.

Julie Mullenix, a lobbyist and a spokesman for Rural Arkansas Telephone Systems, said in testimony that she was skeptical of how long it would take and how much it would cost the state to connect the school districts to the network. She did not return a phone call late Friday asking for comment.

She pointed out that three of the more rural community colleges were still waiting to be connected to ARE-ON because the partnership ran out of money from a federal grant before laying all of the cable needed to connect those schools. She said it could cost as much as $500 million to connect the school districts to the network.

Elsa Becker, a spokesman for FASTER Arkansas, which stands for Fast Access for Students, Teachers & Economic Results, said the group believes allowing access to ARE-ON would offer a cost savings. The group's members were appointed by Beebe from private industries to study the issue of broadband from an economic perspective.

Becker did not have an estimate on how much money the state would save by allowing schools to use the network, but she said the Education Department was working on calculating the savings. She said the group was "ecstatic" about Beebe's support.

"We believe this is an urgent issue and that there are a lot of Arkansas schools falling behind," Becker said. "By allowing schools the option ... we can create a more educated workforce, keep jobs in the state and save taxpayers' money."

Even though the group has the governor's backing, Becker said it is reaching out to constituents -- along with superintendents, teachers and school boards -- to advocate for changing the law.

The discussion on how to increase broadband access is part of the state's biennial educational adequacy study, which takes a look at the state of education spending and makes recommendations for priorities to the Legislature. Along with teacher salary, National School Lunch appropriation spending, charter school building funds and a handful of other issues, broadband access has been a major part of the adequacy study discussion before the House and Senate education committees this year.

Recommendations from the adequacy study are due to the full Legislature by Nov. 1.

A Section on 06/14/2014

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