US school district uses reserved spectrum to provide internet access
One school district in rural Virginia has made use of the little-known Educational Broadband Service (EBS) to build its own broadband networks and bridge the digital divide. In Albemarle County, officials have estimated that one fifth of students don't have access to home broadband. As a result, county officials have decided to build their own broadband network using the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum designated for educational use, the EBS. "We don’t decide which students get textbooks based on their address, so we shouldn’t do that with digital access”, said Vince Scheivert, CIO for the county's schools. 
The floor-to-ceiling glass wall between the high-tech fabrication lab and the hallway at Monticello High School in Albemarle County, Virginia, is meant to showcase the hands-on, self-directed learning done there.

“I give the kids access to all the tools pretty much right off the bat,” said Eric Bredder, with a sweeping gesture taking in the computer workstations, 3-D printers, laser cutters and milling machines, plus a bevy of wood and metalworking tools that he uses while teaching computer science, engineering and design classes. But Bredder can’t give students the tool he considers most indispensable to 21st-century learning—broadband internet beyond school walls.

“This is an equity issue,” said Bredder. “If some kids can go home and learn, discover and backfill information, while other kids’ learning stops at school, that’s a huge problem.”

Whether it’s used for homework-assignment web searches, streamed video tutorials, educational apps or collaborative multimedia projects, fast internet at home is rapidly turning into a necessity for America’s students. Yet, according to a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center, about five million households with school-aged children are mired in the so-called homework gap, because they can’t afford broadband or they live in underserved rural areas, such as the expanse of farms and hillside vineyards of this Virginia district spreading south from Charlottesville to the small town of Scottsville along a bend in the James River.

In places like Albemarle County, where school officials estimate up to 20 percent of students lack home broadband, all the latest education-technology tools meant to narrow opportunity and achievement gaps can widen them instead. So, rather than wait for reluctant commercial internet providers to expand their reach, the district is trying an audacious solution. They’re building their own countywide broadband network.

Still in its early stages, this ambitious project relies on a little-known public resource — a slice of electromagnetic spectrum the federal government long ago set aside for schools — called the Educational Broadband Service (EBS). Some internet-access advocates say EBS is underutilized at best, and wasted at worst, because loose regulatory oversight by the FCC has allowed most of the spectrum to fall into the hands of commercial internet companies.

The resulting spectrum scarcity may be the most daunting of the legal, technical and monetary challenges faced by any district hoping to create its own broadband network. But a few pioneering districts have shown that it’s possible, and Albemarle County has joined a nascent trend of districts trying to build their own bridges across the digital divide.

Peak Internet

Standing outside Monticello High School, it’s easy to spot Carters Mountain about two miles to the east, thanks to the crowd of radio towers perched near its peak. Built on land leased from an orchard, the towers rise above pink-and-white-flowering apple trees, and are operated by TV and radio stations, as well as telecommunications companies. On one of these towers, the Albemarle County schools have hung base stations that link to broadband internet beamed up from the roof of a nearby elementary school. The hardware on the towers then blasts that connection about 10 miles into the valley below. Carters Mountain is the first of four planned mountaintop tower sites that will help blanket the county with broadband in the next two years.

Vince Scheivert, chief information officer for the county’s schools, is leading the network build-out. “All our students should be provided with the same tools to be successful in today’s world,” he said. “We don’t decide which students get textbooks based on their address, so we shouldn’t do that with digital access.”