FCC awards $55M to help connect students

WASHINGTON – The Federal Communications Commission today announced it is committing nearly $55 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Fund Program, which provides digital tools and services to support students in communities across the country. Today's funding commitment supports applications from the third application window, benefitting approximately 115,000 students nationwide, including students in Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Utah.

Today's announcement will support approximately 130 schools and school districts, 12 libraries and library systems, and 4 consortia. The funding can be used to support off-campus learning, such as nightly homework, and summertime online learning programs to ensure students across the country have the necessary support to keep up with their education. More details about which schools and libraries have received funding commitments can be found at https://www.fcc.gov/emergency-connectivity-fund.

Launched in 2021, the Emergency Connectivity Program has provided schools and libraries three different "application windows" to apply for support. Approximately $6.8 billion in funding commitments have been approved to date, approximately $4.14 billion is supporting applications from Window 1; $834 million from Window 2; and $1.84 billion from Window 3. To date, the funding has provided support to approximately 18 million students, 11,050 schools, 1,050 libraries, and 120 consortia, and provided nearly 13 million connected devices and over 8 million broadband connections.

As a long-term solution to the Homework Gap, Chairwoman Rosenworcel recently announced her new initiative "Learn Without Limits" to modernize the E-Rate program to allow for Wi-Fi on school buses and for permanent support to loan out Wi-Fi hotspots.

Read the full press release here.

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