The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) announced more than $21 million in funding for the Emergency Connectivity Fund Program, which provides digital services for students in communities across the country.
The funding will be benefitting approximately 40,000 students across the country, including students in Georgia, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Texas, and Wisconsin. The FCC said in a press release that this funding will benefit five school districts and three schools. The funding can be used to support off-campus learning, such as nightly homework, to ensure students across the country have the necessary support to keep up with their education.
“With the onset of summer, and many students participating in online learning programs, we’re pleased to announce another round of funding to give kids the digital tools they need to connect with classrooms and teachers,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “This program is making important progress in our ongoing work to close the Homework Gap.”
As part of its funding process, the ECP had three application windows that schools and libraries could apply to. This latest round of funding will go towards applications from the first and third filing windows.
Thus far, the FCC has committed approximately $6.7 billion in funding, approximately $4.14 billion is supporting applications from Window 1; $834 million from Window 2; and $1.75 billion from Window 3. To date, the program has provided support to approximately 11,000 schools, 1,000 libraries, and 120 consortia, and provided nearly 13 million connected devices and over 8 million broadband connections.
