SOUTH BEND — Free internet access is available to any South Bend Community School Corp. families with students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
Citywide Classroom South Bend — a partnership between the city of South Bend, the school district and local nonprofit enFocus — has already served nearly 1,000 households across the city through a needs-based rollout of at-home internet plans and mobile Wi-Fi hotspots, program leaders announced Monday.
Those connections are currently serving more than 1,700 students districtwide.
“This initiative has really worked on easing the burden that our families face with internet access,” said Patrick Stalvey, chief technology officer for South Bend schools. “We’ve started moving the bar, but we still have more to go. The good news is we still have more internet to provide.”
Students’ homes may be eligible for a Comcast Internet Essential service package or a mobile data hotspot through the Citywide Classroom South Bend program.
Nearly 65{a7758c3706987b952e6c06b8e84de22b0478c6ec9e4b4c13f69a9ea693861278} of South Bend students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, according to the Indiana Department of Education.
The Citywide Classroom South Bend program began as a pilot within the South Bend Empowerment Zone and expanded last October to serve students districtwide with funding from a $1.8 million Governors Emergency Education Relief grant awarded to help expand access to remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic.
The program supplements other efforts across the city to increase access to free internet through community partners and Wi-Fi enabled school buses.
Program leaders are still collecting data, but say anecdotally that attendance and engagement in pandemic-related remote learning has increased among participating students.
Citywide Classroom South Bend estimates just under 30{a7758c3706987b952e6c06b8e84de22b0478c6ec9e4b4c13f69a9ea693861278} of South Bend lacks a connection to broadband, which means about 3,500 students districtwide could be lacking home internet access.
“It is really hard to teach a math lesson when halfway through the lesson, you’re knocked off because you’re borrowing internet service,” Coquillard Elementary School Principal Antoine Reed said. “This partnership means a lot to our community. It means a lot to our students, because we needed this service.”
Funding from the GEER grant will help supply more than 2,200 at-home internet packages and 2,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the city, according to Citywide Classroom South Bend in an effort organizers say they hope extends beyond the pandemic.
Citywide Classroom South Bend has secured funding for two years for its mobile hotspots. Additional funding for community access points provided as a surprise gift during the South Bend district’s October appearance on Good Morning America will extend five years, Stalvey said.
“We want to see more broadband access in people’s homes in addition to increases in better shared broadband access in community spaces across the city,” said Denise Linn Riedl, chief innovation officer for the city. “This effort, I think, is a great step in moving forward in closing the digital divide.”
To learn more about Citywide Classroom South Bend or to apply for internet services, visit citywideclassroomsb.org. Families can also contact their student’s school administrators to request more information.
