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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.