These locations include a fire station, a water-treatment facility and even a silo in El Jebel. ![]() Partners and private building owners near high-density communities that lacked internet also agreed to have equipment placed there. The school district received a total of $400,000 from two rounds of the Connecting Colorado Students Grant Fund to mount the equipment on six school buildings. Using antennas, the district created its own LTE network, which is what cellphone providers use to enable internet access on smartphones. The school district, which sought a permanent solution, took advantage of new technology released early in 2020. “The crux of the issue,” Gatlin said, “is how do we ensure that students that don’t have internet access can still engage and still access educational opportunities.” The district saw enrollment drop more than 6% between 20 the decline was probably partly caused by the pandemic and technological issues. Still, not every student was able to get online. For students who couldn’t get temporary service, the district opened some schools so they could use computers. Some were able to sign up for temporary promotions through internet companies that offered inexpensive internet for several months. ![]() Jeff Gatlin, Chief Operating Officer of Roaring Fork Schools, holds up a broadband high speed internet receiver while standing next to a transmitter array on top of the roof of Basalt Elementary Friday afternoon.Īccording to Jeff Gatlin, chief operating officer for Roaring Fork Schools, some families could not get immediate internet access when schools first went online. Additional families had low-quality internet access that was either too slow or did not work well with multiple people using it simultaneously. Last April, a Roaring Fork Schools survey found that 340 students - about 6% of the district’s student population - did not have access to the internet for remote learning. Of its 226 students, English in Action found that only 43% had access to a computer - and some of those students did not know how to use it. In the Roaring Fork Valley, data is even more limited, but several groups that conducted technology surveys in their communities found significant gaps in digital equity. The state estimates that 87% of rural households have sufficient broadband access, but those estimates are based on self-reported data from internet providers. Hard data on technology access is limited in Colorado. “And then just imagine if all of that’s also in a language that you’re not used to.” “I think about all the quick little keypad strokes that I know that for my 70-year-old parents, it … blows their minds,” she said. From the discussions, a wide range of problems emerged: families couldn’t access online forms for pandemic assistance kids couldn’t attend school online older adults couldn’t manage food deliveries and people couldn’t receive telehealth services.Īccording to Schalit, many suffering the most were part of immigrant communities or did not speak English as their first language. Schalit launched an internet-equity roundtable early during the pandemic to bring together different groups throughout the Roaring Fork Valley and identify technological issues. “We can hustle and get it done, but the systems have to change.” ![]() “The valley rallied super hard (during the pandemic), and we still let people fall through the cracks,” said Sydney Schalit, executive director of Manaus, a social-justice nonprofit based in Carbondale. Many of the resulting initiatives will continue to help some people connect long after the pandemic is over, but major gaps still remain. Nongovernmental organizations, school districts and government agencies in rural mountain towns acted quickly to bridge the digital divide. “Now we know that even with loosening restrictions around COVID, digital literacy is still going to be essential for our participants.” “Digital literacy has always been an obstacle, but pre-COVID, we had other areas that came more to the forefront,” said Lara Beaulieu, executive director of English in Action. Technological inequities have long been present in rural places such as the Roaring Fork Valley, but the sudden shutdowns illuminated just how deeply entrenched the problem was. As a result, English in Action lost about a third of its participants during the pandemic. While Posada was able to persevere, many in valley residents were never able to jump on a Zoom meeting. But many people in the Roaring Fork Valley were cut off from certain services or activities because they lacked access to the internet and/or the technical know-how needed to use it. When the pandemic hit, life pretty much moved online.
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