Moving California schools online was difficult. Imagine doing it without fast internet or laptops

Like many education leaders who are trying to teach students from afar, Katherine Wright is wrestling with the internet.

The complex challenge came into focus recently when the superintendent of the River Delta Joint Unified School District looked over a coverage map for the internet service provider T-Mobile.

The wireless carrier is helping the district provide WiFi devices to students and staff. But a number of places were in so-called “white spots,” which meant big service providers do not offer adequate coverage so the internet — even on a mobile hotspot — is not an option.

“The most remote areas of our district are in those spots,” Wright said. “It’s not even possible to get them access to (the internet).”

Across the Sacramento region and California, school districts are hustling to get devices into the hands of students to resume their education. They have a few options: traditional paper packets or virtual instruction, which requires every student to have access to a computer and quality internet.

But some districts may face greater challenges than others, a Sacramento Bee analysis has found.

There are fewer quality internet connections per capita in more than a dozen census tracts in the four-county area. The places are covered by school districts in Woodland, Davis and some far corners of Sacramento County; and in Lincoln and other school districts deeper into the Sierra foothills.

It is a fraction of the nearly 500 tracts The Bee found across the state where there were fewer than 600 internet connections for every 1,000 households. The Bee analyzed data from the Federal Communications Commission, which collects information on broadband internet subscribers from companies, and combined it with population estimates from the census.

The FCC collects the data twice a year and the most recent survey was completed in December 2017. The analysis was limited to places with a population at or greater than 1,000 people, including one tract partially covered by the River Delta School District.

The district spans 50 miles of rural, riverfront and island communities at the southern tip of Sacramento County. In some cases, Wright said teachers don’t have quality internet access either.

Blanca Maravilla, a parent who lives west of the Sacramento River on Sutter Island, knows the struggle firsthand.

“I live where there is almost nothing at all,” she said.

She tried to get larger companies like AT&T and Frontier Communications but they didn’t cover the area. Maravilla landed recently with a company based in Galt called Softcom Internet Communications. They had to put an antenna on top of her house to get a signal, she said.

It’s working out, but just barely sometimes, she said. Her family, including a son who is a junior at Delta High School, cannot get on the internet all at once without it lagging.

Internet dead zones

For decades, schools have used computers to supplement instruction. The transition to online testing has only accelerated the trend, said Niu Gao, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, who has studied the “digital divide” in education.

The FCC oversees a multibillion-dollar program called E-rate that has helped many school districts improve their internet connectivity. The initiative boosted the number of schools in the state with a connection fast enough to run basic programs.

A PPIC report concluded 90 percent of the state’s school districts met the minimum standard in 2018, and about 59 percent had internet connections that were faster. The widespread school closings sent thousands of students home. For some, that means reliable internet is in doubt.

“A lot of the districts are still working or hoping to roll out their distance learning plan and technology is going to be the main method for delivery,” Gao said. “If a student doesn’t have reliable access in their home it could cause disruption to their learning.”

River Delta’s internet challenge predates COVID-19. The district was listed among 37 others across the state still lacking the kind of internet infrastructure — a fiber connection — necessary to handle online education, according to Education Superhighway, a group that tracks internet access in the nation’s schools.

Addressing the need has required some creative thinking. Wright said they’re relying on a grant with T-Mobile that allows them to purchase hotspots at a discounted $20 apiece. They started an ongoing technology needs survey that gained a response from 100 families in the school district of 2,300 students.

It’s the places in the “white spots” — internet dead zones — that are most challenging, she said. Bigger cities may have more options for public WiFi so the district may place hotspots in some school parking lots, like a drive-in theater but for the internet.

“There are areas in our district that are just completely light which means that’s the area they will never cover,” Wright said. “If the children lived within that area we’re trying to find a place where they can go that’s safe.”

The lack of coverage is on the extreme end of challenges, though. It’s more common that students can get a WiFi signal but do not have access to the internet or a computer, she said. The school district will begin laptop distribution this week but is still waiting on a delivery of 100 hotspot devices that have been delayed several times — likely the result of more demand.

“We’re tiny and the surrounding districts bought up a lot of them,” said Carrie Norris, the principal of Walnut Grove Elementary in the River Delta School District. “Our families, even if they do have the internet out here, it’s not great.”

‘This is going to push him back a lot’

During the two days of laptop distribution at Walnut Grove, Norris noted the types of internet connections some families have at home before school resumes on April 20.

Some said they had pay-as-you-go phones with Boost Mobile or Cricket Wireless, others said they have Sprint or Frontier Communication but the quality wasn’t great. Norris is worried that the mix of low-grade internet and demographics could harm some students long-term.

Last school year, nearly two out of every five students at Walnut Grove were English learners, according to state data. Researchers also caution that if those students cannot do the work online it will widen gaps in performance and deepen inequality.

“The best instruction they’re going to get is on the online platform,” Norris said. At least they will see their teachers and get actual instruction. It’s very difficult to provide that in a packet.”

Parents Perla and Jesse Ibarra know the repercussions an unreliable internet connection could have on their two school-age children. Perla said she’s particularly worried about her son, a seventh-grader who tends to do better in small groups.

“This is going to push him back a lot,” she said. “Not being in school and not having that face-to-face, it’s going to affect him I know.”

The Ibarras, who live in Isleton, have tried different internet service providers but were disappointed with the results. They recently started paying $70 a month for a hotspot with Sprint.

“It’s hard to get a strong signal. There’s only one or two carriers that provide service out there and some of them are pretty expensive,” said Jesse Ibarra. “We’ve been using a hotspot with Sprint and it’s working somewhat but it’s not a very strong signal. We get a lot of stopping.”

“Just buffering,” Perla Ibarra said, “all the time.”

Urban and suburban schools struggle less

The state Department of Education offers broad guidance on distance learning and does not mandate using digital devices. Some districts hope that the internet will help bridge the lack of face-to-face instruction.

Urban and suburban school districts may find it easier to connect students. Most of the areas identified by The Bee’s analysis were outlying places and several miles away from Sacramento.

Take Natomas Unified School District, for example, which has about 11,000 students, excluding adult education programs. The suburban Sacramento school district also issued a survey and received more than 8,500 responses.

Most asked for a Chromebook, a small laptop computer created by Google, but not as many requested internet support. Superintendent Chris Evans said the district has already ordered 2,000 mobile WiFi hotspots in case families feel they need extra support.

“That’s probably way overkill because as of noon today 276 families requested support for internet access,” Evans said. “It isn’t necessarily surprising. We do a survey every year and our families actually say they have a high degree of internet connectivity which surprised us as a school district.”

Schools were shuttered last month to help slow the spread of the new coronavirus. After public health officials urged a longer period of social distancing, many districts are reckoning with how to teach students remotely for the rest of the school year.

“We thought we were going to be closed for two weeks so we went with the packet as a backup for people if they didn’t want to do it on the internet,” said Scott Leaman, superintendent of the Western Placer Unified School District.

The district takes in three of the Sacramento region’s low internet census tracts the Bee found. Leaman said one appeared to be in an industrial area but the other two are a concern. Home to about 7,000 students, Western Placer Unified is also distributing laptops and hotspots and scaling up online education seemingly overnight.

Leaman said he too was caught flat-footed by the school closures. The missed days of instruction already has him thinking about summer school to fill in the learning gaps.

“It’s naive to think there isn’t going to be a major loss,” Leaman said. “We have English learners and special education students that really do need that direct intervention. Those are probably the groups that we need to focus on this summer.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 5:00 AM.