November 16, 2020

Rural students can’t get online

Remote school requires an internet connection. For students who live in rural areas, limited service can be a huge obstacle.

Shekinah Lennon, 17, attends online class from a kitchen table in Orrum, N.C., a rural community of fewer than 100 people with no grocery store or traffic lights. This fall, the video suddenly froze. The wireless antenna on the roof had stopped working, and it couldn’t be fixed. Shekinah’s mother called five broadband companies, all of which gave the same answer: Service is not available in your area.

“It’s not fair,” Shekinah told our colleague Dan Levin. “I don’t think just the people who live in the city should have internet. We need it in the country, too.”

In rural parts of North Carolina, some children spend school nights crashing at the homes of more-connected relatives so they can get online for classes the next day. In one district, parents come to the school every two weeks to hand in flash drives filled with completed schoolwork and receive new ones, uploaded with lesson videos and assignments.

“In school I made all A’s and B’s,” one 14-year-old, who has been forced to rely on flash drives to do his school work. “Now I’m failing.”

For months, local education leaders have lobbied state and federal officials for systemic solutions, rather than Band-Aid fixes like hot spots.

Today, many parents use a map of public Wi-Fi locations to help their children get online, and students can often be seen hunched over laptops in cars parked within range of wireless routers.

“It just adds insult to injury when you’re forced to sit in a McDonald’s parking lot to learn,” said Monique Felder, the school superintendent in Orange County, N.C.