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4 The Columbia Press November 6, 2020 Internet: Collaborations help students get online Continued from Page 1 a long time, but COVID-19 highlighted the problem, says the Ford Family Foundation, a nonprofit group that pro- vides administrative and fi- nancial assistance to rural parts of the state. Thirty-seven percent of rural Americans have no broadband internet service at home, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center report. Access also varies by demo- graphic, with minority house- holds at a disadvantage. Warrenton-Hammond School District bought tab- lets for many students this year and made arrangements for them to find wifi hotspots, such as Warrenton Commu- nity Library and Camp Kiwa- nalong. The Ford foundation began providing support to several Douglas County school dis- tricts so they could provide hotspots and the technology for families in remote areas to access distance learning. The foundation helped Mal- heur County with a grant for its schools in remote areas. In Crook County, the school district used a pair of school buses as mobile hotspots and parked them around Prineville and in the tiny towns of Juniper Canyon and Powell Butte. Students bring chairs and their computers or do their homework in family In Crook County, the school district uses buses as mobile internet hotspots. Crook County School District cars parked near the buses. In Hornbrook, a town of 250 in Northern California, expensive cellular data is cur- rently the only way to access the internet, creating a bar- rier for students engaged in online learning. A grant from the Shasta Regional Com- munity Foundation is fund- ing a project to install router equipment that will give most neighborhoods hot spots that will provide free internet ac- cess. In Willamina, southwest of McMinville, a recent col- laboration between the town and local provider OnlineNW meant that, when COVID-19 hit, more than 90 percent of the town had access to su- per-fast fiberoptic internet service in their homes or places of work. “A year and a half ago, not even half the town had the ability to get hooked up,” says Lincoln Monroe of On- lineNW. Willamina was the second rural project for On- line NW, which also offers high-speed service in Dayton. Some communities have used municipal infrastruc- ture to create affordable new networks. In 2007, for exam- ple, Independence partnered with the neighboring city of Monmouth to form their own company, MINET, to build multicity broadband infra- structure. The federal CARES Act includes funds to help ru- ral communities connect to high-speed internet. Oregon has $10 million available for broadband projects, with pri- ority given to projects that provide broadband access to K-12 students. In addition, the Oregon Legislature re- cently passed a cell phone tax to fund expanded broadband service in remote parts of the state. 911 staff graduates from academy Two members of the Asto- ria Police Department grad- uate today, Nov. 6, from the basic telecommunications class for 911 operators at the police academy in Salem. Dispatchers Bobbie An- dring and Jesse Kirkendall were members of the 121st graduating class, a three- week course that includes emergency call handling, stress management, civil li- ability, ethics, criminal law, and fire-rescue and law en- forcement operations. The 9-1-1 training program began in 1993.