What Will Trump’s FCC Mean for America’s Schools?
February 6, 2018 1:24 pm |A change in leadership at the Federal Communications Commission has led to rising uncertainty about the future of efforts to boost broadband access, preserve an open internet, and protect online privacy—all issues affecting the K-12 sector.
Atop education leaders’ list of concerns is the E-rate, a $3.9 billion federal program that helps schools and libraries pay for telecommunications services. A wide cross-section of experts credits the FCC’s 2014 overhaul of the program to remove funding for previously eligible services such as voice (telephone), cellular, website hosting, etc. moved to Category Two, (Wi-Fi) network infrastructure. One adjustment to the E-rate that would likely be roundly applauded: streamlining the program’s burdensome paperwork requirements. It’s an issue that has been on Pai’s radar screen for years.
For the past three filing cycles, it has been anything but streamlined. USAC has been required to gather more data while making the process more complex, additional delays and errors in the process. For example, during the 2017-18 cycle, several Confirmation Form 486s were overlooked for several months causing additional delays in disbursement of funds to the Service Providers. This, in turn, required Schools to pay 100% of their technology services until it was resolved. We are now well over halfway through the funding cycle and SPs are still not sure if Form 486 was approved and they can begin their process of disbursement. It cannot be expressed enough that we need to return to the more simplified version of filing that occurred for the first fifteen years of the program.
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This post was written by Dan Burns
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