As the Senate reexamines the Universal Service Fund (USF), education technology leaders are urging lawmakers to protect and modernize the E-Rate program, which they say has connected nearly every U.S. public school to the internet but now faces mounting cybersecurity and funding challenges.
In a statement to the Senate USF Working Group, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and SETDA urged lawmakers to maintain funding for the USF program, which was deemed constitutional earlier this summer by the Supreme Court.
The working group itself was only just reconstituted in June, which evaluates and proposes potential reforms to the USF. The USF is a program administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that collects money from telecommunications companies to attain universal communications services.
The E-Rate program, provided through USF, is “essential to ensuring every school and library has affordable, high-capacity broadband and other advanced communications services,” said CoSN and SETDA.
“Secure, high-capacity broadband is as fundamental to today’s schools as textbooks and electricity. Without it, students cannot access the modern learning experiences that define education in the 21st century,” reads the statement.
“Without robust and universal broadband access, schools cannot provide the active, technology-enabled learning environments that students deserve, including the responsible and universal use of Artificial Intelligence,” they continued.
According to the statement, broadband access provided through E-Rate has benefited 99% of public school students and 45% of private school students, with 90% of E-Rate applicants reporting that the program is critical to meeting their internet connectivity goals.
Without E-Rate, CoSN said it found that 74% of school districts would “face a major or catastrophic impact on operations,” with 74% of rural districts and 78% of city districts being the most vulnerable.
To build upon the program’s successes, CoSN and SETDA recommended that the Senate working group reaffirm its commitment to E-Rate and modernize the program to address cybersecurity needs.
Those needs would help support schools that are already stretching their budgets to cover cybersecurity, with CoSN reporting that 61% of districts rely on general funds for cyber, and 78% spend on monitoring and detection tools instead of comprehensive protections.
“Expand E-Rate’s eligible services to cover a range of cybersecurity protections such as next-generation firewalls, endpoint security and filtering — services that districts consistently identify as priorities,” reads the statement, adding that the working group should evaluate the outcomes of the E-Rate Cybersecurity Pilot “to determine how federal agencies can continue supporting this issue after the pilot’s conclusion.”
The organizations also urged supporting sustainable home connectivity, noting that classrooms “are any location where a student is learning,” and are not necessarily just on-campus spaces.
Ensuring long-term USF sustainability by expanding the program’s contribution base with the aim of stabilizing funding and maintaining the program’s independence from congressional appropriations processes should also be a priority, the groups said.
“E-Rate has transformed U.S. education by connecting nearly every school and library to the internet,” reads the statement. “But progress is fragile. Cybersecurity threats are accelerating, state broadband funding is declining and millions of students remain without adequate home access.”