Officials and donors involved in an ambitious plan to provide free broadband access to students in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods hope that the public-private partnership can be a model for efforts to address digital equity issues elsewhere in the U.S.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the Chicago Connected project, which aims to provide free broadband internet for 100,000 children in the city’s largest school district for four years, on June 25. The $50 million plan has been funded by philanthropic donations, the Chicago public school system and city funds.
Ken Griffin, the chief executive of investment firm Citadel LLC, who contributed $7.5 million, said the program could serve as a template for other cities facing similar issues with student internet access.
“The hope is that by helping to support these entrepreneurs of social change, we’re able to create role models that are copied across the country,” he said.
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin.
Photo:
mike blake/Reuters
Other donations came from Crown Family Philanthropies, which contributed $5 million, former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, and the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, among others.
Jennie Bennett, Chicago’s chief financial officer, said private involvement has been critical to the success of the program, which she hopes can eventually be expanded to address the city’s digital divide more broadly.
“We need to build permanent infrastructure to really change the trajectory of the livelihoods of our residents. I think this program is a perfect example of that, but you can’t do it alone. You need help,” she said.
Chicago Connected will begin contacting households that can benefit from the program this week before supplying wired broadband connections through RCN Corp. and Comcast Corp. Eligibility is determined by a range of factors, including whether households receive meal subsidies, while programs instituted by Chicago Public Schools after the pandemic’s outbreak have already supplied children with equipment such as computers and Wi-Fi hot spots.
The initiative was spurred by an April study by nonprofit advocacy group Kids First Chicago, which found that in some areas of the city, such as West Englewood, 46% of children under the age of 18 don’t have access to broadband at home. Other districts, largely in the city’s less-affluent south and west sides, had similar levels of access. The issue overwhelmingly affects Black and Latinx minorities, the report found.
Even those figures don’t properly illustrate the scale of the issue on the ground, said Daniel Anello, the group’s chief executive.
“The truth is, if you go block-to-block, there are areas where 80% of the households aren’t connected, just based on the poverty conditions that are there,” he said.
Digital equity has long been an issue across U.S. cities. In New York City, for instance, around 40% of households don’t have both home and mobile broadband access, and 18% lack either, according to a digital equity plan released in January by the Mayor’s office. Similar findings have been reported in Los Angeles, Houston and elsewhere.
Studies show that internet access is linked closely with socioeconomic factors such as poverty and racial demographics. In Detroit, researchers at the University of Michigan found in 2019 that up to 70% of school-age children in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods can’t access the internet at home.
Last year, one out of every five students across the U.S. didn’t have access to a reliable connection, according to EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit. The switch to remote learning, which depends on children using videoconferencing and streaming services, has exacerbated the divide during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Being the father of children who are in school, realizing that we were about to pivot to remote learning, you immediately realize that for 100,000 kids in Chicago, not only is Covid-19 a health crisis but an education crisis,” Mr. Griffin said.
Internet access is now an essential part of a successful education, said Janice Jackson, chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, which is funding the last two years of the program. Fall plans for remote learning are still being determined, she said.
A third-grader from the Chicago suburb of Northbrook using a remote-learning program in March.
Photo:
Prensa Internacional/Zuma Press
While Chicago Connected is focused on CPS, the third-largest school district in the country, Dr. Jackson also said that initiatives such as this could be expanded on a national level, given the wide-ranging nature of digital divides.
“I’m hoping that the federal government and others are going to be taking this up and looking at legislation and other programming that will help us do this. Not just in high-need areas, or large urban cities like Chicago, but I’m also concerned about what’s happening in some of our rural areas throughout the country,” she said.
Lawmakers say there is bipartisan support for addressing the problem of unequal access to broadband. Citadel’s Mr. Griffin said that he hopes they are taking note of what is happening in the Windy City.
“I do hope that in DC, people go, ‘you know what, what they’re doing in Chicago right here, right now, we need to make sure happens in Detroit for this fall.’ I hope that people in the halls of Congress are thinking about this as a necessary initiative for our country to address the important issue of educational equality, access and opportunity for the school year,” he said.
Write to James Rundle at james.rundle@wsj.com
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