E-rate Advocates Plan Major Push to Keep Program Alive

Wender said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has discussed a comprehensive review of all USF programs, so the agency asking questions about E-rate wasn’t a surprise. But “we were startled to see [the NPRM’s] scope and that it calls into question the very existence of the program,” he said. The draft “explicitly asks whether the program should be sunset and whether it should be limited to only rural areas -- those are the FCC’s words.” Wender also spoke about E-rate during a Capitol Hill briefing Friday (see 2606050067).

“The concern here is how much of an overreach the proposal represents,” Ng told us. “It’s a very disruptive proposal.” E-rate is one of the five largest federal funding streams in school district budgets and the only federal education technology program, she noted. School districts have always used E-rate to pay for the internet, and the program was approved by Congress, not the FCC, she added. “Who are they to sunset the program?”

“When you talk about a proposal that includes questions” on sunsetting E-rate, "you’re talking about sunsetting internet access to schools,” Ng said. Schools use the internet to monitor buses and in their security systems to lock doors “to keep the right people in and the right people out.” They also use it to monitor air flow, temperature and quality, she said.

AASA “will raise all the alarms,” Ng said. “We will highlight exactly what this proposal is.” She said superintendents will be in Washington, D.C., for a conference in July and will “blanket” Capitol Hill. “We will raise a big alarm about exactly what this FCC and this administration are proposing for the nation’s schools.”

Wender called the draft NPRM “an attack on school and library funding across the country.” It “proposes ending the program” and poses “an existential threat.” The item will be “a call to action for schools and libraries across the country to make their voices heard and tell the FCC to stop their plan to ax E-rate,” he said.

SHLB will work with all E-rate stakeholders to ensure that the docket the FCC launches is “filled with perspectives and stories and lessons about how essential E-rate is,” Wender added.

'Across-the-Administration' Effort

NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth said at a Free State Foundation event Thursday that she sees the NPRM’s other focus, an examination of screen time issues, as critical. As a mother of six, Roth said, she has “really grappled with” the issue. “This has really become an across-the-administration effort.”

As for E-rate, she said she was “really excited” by the review “to ensure that the program is operating, ultimately, in the interests of children.”

The Trump administration is focused on “empowering parents,” Roth said. “The voices we want to hear from are those that are directly affected by technology in schools -- parents, teachers, children.” The E-rate discussion has been too dominated by “lobbyists, consultants and companies,” she argued.

E-rate supporters said the NPRM appears targeted to please the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again base and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, an E-rate critic. Roth is a former aide to Cruz.

Ng said she's “not sure that there’s a world where you could logically say, ‘I’m in this for the kids, but let’s pull internet access for schools.’”

Wender and Ng said the FCC’s decision to eliminate small programs funding off-premises hot spots and school bus Wi-Fi, both of which were approved during the Biden administration (see 2509300051), was very different than proposing to eliminate a decades-old program created by Congress.