FCC launches review of E-Rate school internet subsidy

Carr cites student screen time as basis for E-Rate review

The Federal Communications Commission in late June approved a notice of proposed rulemaking that opens a full review of the E-Rate program, which Congress created in 1996 as part of the Telecommunications Act. The program, overseen by both Democratic and Republican administrations, has been credited with raising internet access in schools from 14% to near-universal coverage.

Current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the review is intended to protect children using E-Rate-funded networks. The notice of proposed rulemaking calls for a review “to better protect children when using E-Rate-funded networks, including to limit screen time,” according to the approved text.

Carr previously helped write the chapter on federal broadband policy in the Project 2025 blueprint, a document compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation meant to guide the second Trump administration. The blueprint targeted federal broadband policy as an area for cutting agency spending.

David Thurston, who oversees technology for the 33 school districts in California’s San Bernardino County, said the county covers more than 20,000 square miles — including mountain regions, far-flung desert areas, and urban and suburban zones — and has already built the physical internet infrastructure from the edge of Los Angeles to the state’s eastern border. But the ongoing costs, he said, are significant.

“Those are ongoing, essentially, utility costs,” Thurston said. “That’s what E-Rate pays for.”

Thurston said the per-district monthly bill runs tens of thousands of dollars. “There’s no doing without,” he said. School districts “are gonna have to pick up the costs.”

By the FCC’s own data and its own measurement, he said, “the program is healthy. The program is doing what it needs to and is important.”

Carr’s justification for the review drew criticism from some advocates. Josh Grolin, executive director of Fairplay, a nonprofit focused on digital safety for kids, said reducing screen time does not require cutting E-Rate funding.

“We believe there are ways of strengthening school policies to promote more limited and privacy-protecting use of EdTech without taking away critical E-Rate funding,” Grolin said in a statement.

Several states have already passed legislation calling for reevaluation of technology in teaching and testing. Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia have enacted such measures, and more than 10 other states are considering similar restrictions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 48 states now have some kind of online component with exams. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the country, recently approved a policy to limit screen time for its students.

But many schools rely on internet-based systems for tasks ranging from attendance tracking to state-mandated online exams.

Bob Bocher, a senior fellow with the American Library Association and a participant in drafting the original 1996 law, said the FCC is unlikely to fully eliminate E-Rate because the program is written into the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Supreme Court last year ruled that the Universal Service Fund — which collects the money that schools and libraries use to lower internet costs — is constitutional.

However, Bocher expressed concern that the agency could make the program so complicated that schools and libraries stop participating by design.

“It’s like death by a thousand cuts,” Bocher said, “death by a thousand rules and regulations.”

In rural and remote areas with limited competition for internet service providers, the stakes are especially high. Patrick Mayer, superintendent of the Alaska Gateway School District, a largely roadless region where some students rely on planes to get to school in winter, said the district of just under 400 students spends more than half a million dollars per year to ensure internet access at its six schools. The district has only one internet provider.

“It means the difference between having a school in the 21st century or a school in the 20th century,” Mayer said. The connectivity allows students to take dual-enrollment courses online with a local college and access virtual speech and occupational therapy.

“To backfill that funding would be very, very difficult,” Mayer said. He said the district would likely have to cut staff and student services to pay the entire internet bill.

Once the FCC officially publishes its notice of proposed rulemaking, the public will have 60 days to comment, followed by a 30-day reply comment period and then a full review of the input by the agency. Mayer spent several days in Washington, D.C., this month meeting with legislators to advocate for preserving the funding.