Panel pushes state broadband network

Industry dismisses proposal, says schools already have access to Internet

ARKADELPHIA -- The Quality Digital Learning Study Committee recommended Tuesday that the state run a centralized broadband network to provide Internet service to schools around the state, a move telecommunications companies said would be expensive and redundant to their private efforts to wire the state for Internet service.

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Arkansas educational broadband

The committee released its report on the state's digital learning needs -- including access to broadband -- at a joint meeting of the House and Senate education committees at Arkadelphia High School. Other recommendations in the report included changing the law to allow K-12 schools to use existing, privately owned fiber-optic cable structures used by the state's universities and adopting a national industry standard for how much bandwidth each student needs for basic learning.

The lack of bandwidth is starting to cause problems for schools as more standardized tests move to online formats. Act 1280 of 2013, passed by the Arkansas Legislature, also requires every school to provide at least one interactive online course, beginning this fall. Adequate Internet access becomes even more elusive for smaller, rural districts limited by geography and class size.

"The reality is this report today is about education. It's about your children, your constituents' children. It's also about the workforce of the future," said Ed Franklin, chairman of the committee and president emeritus of the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges.

"If you look at our demand versus our growth, we've spent nearly $100 million on [the state-run network] with basically the same capacity. Yet the growth in demand for services was phenomenal," he said. "We cannot have a static plan. Technology changes, and this plan is just a beginning. It needs to adapt as we move forward."

The committee, formed by the Legislature, looked at the problem of connectivity from an educational perspective, conducting many of its surveys through the Arkansas Department of Education. At the same time, Gov. Mike Beebe formed Faster Arkansas, a task force of about 25 industry officials that studied the problem from an industry perspective.

Both groups were tasked with providing a report with recommendations to the Legislature.

According to the committee report Tuesday, about 80 percent of public school administrators in the state said their school's Internet connectivity was "inadequate to meet current instructional and administrative needs." About 78 percent of school administrators said they wanted to implement technology initiatives such as Project Lead the Way, an engineering curriculum, but couldn't because of bandwidth limitations.

Schools are also increasingly moving their administrative functions online -- including transportation plans, free and reduced-price lunch applications, school-improvement plans and professional development and licensing requirements -- and thus leaving even less bandwidth for classroom purposes.

The committee report said implementing the recommendations would equalize the cost school districts pay for Internet connectivity, make more bandwidth available to all school districts including those in rural areas and streamline the process of buying and tracking bandwidth progress.

Industry officials took issue with the recommendations Tuesday.

Len Pitcock, chairman of the Arkansas Cable Telecommunications Association and director of governmental affairs for Cox Communications, said providers have done a lot of work in the state in recent years that was not reflected in the study. He said many schools have access to adequate bandwidth but are choosing not to buy it.

"The very first document that was handed out to the Legislature when this whole process was starting had issues in it. It said nearly every school had issues with access to broadband, and when I got that document, I quickly looked for all the schools that our company provides access to, and there were many that were listed as not having access ... and that's just wrong," Pitcock said. "They're deficient on what they're purchasing today, not on what's available to them. We've tried to get that corrected several times since July of last year."

Jordan Johnson, a spokesman for the Arkansas Broadband Coalition for Kids, said the group, made up of telecommunication-service providers, believed that there were multiple inaccuracies in the report. He said the recommendations did not include a cost estimate for the proposed changes and conflicted with state law.

"I think it sounds like [they] want to have a follow-up meeting discussing the relative issues at hand -- cost, accessibility, how robust really is the network," he said. "I think in a side-by-side comparison you're going to see that the providers have an infrastructure that covers 99 percent of all of Arkansas that can easily be tapped into or with the state, can be tapped into to provide all the schools with that access."

Act 1050 of 2011 specifically prohibits the use of the Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network -- a public-private system of cables that connects universities, community colleges and teaching hospitals -- from being used to provide connectivity to K-12 schools. Several legislators said Tuesday that they didn't remember why the restriction was included, but others said there was fear that opening the network for other uses would put the state in competition with private providers.

The report said 42 states have similar networks and 41 allow K-12 schools to access them. Johnson disputed those figures.

Lawmakers Tuesday asked if the industry group could provide its own report including a cost analysis to continue using the private networks and extend infrastructure where needed. The report is tentatively scheduled for May 28 before a joint meeting of the education committees and the House and Senate technology committees.

The report noted that Arkansas was ranked 50th among the states on a Digital Learning Report Card put out in 2012 by the Foundation of Educational Excellence. But recent efforts had increased the state's letter grade from an F to a D, according to the Florida-based foundation's website. The group, formed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, advocates for state-based changes in education that focus on college and career readiness, digital learning and other areas.

Pitcock and other industry representatives said other information also needed to be updated in the report including whether schools were opting not to purchase accessible broadband services.

Metro on 05/07/2014

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