The Virginia School Board Association and wireless service provider Kajeet on May 10 announced 2022 Virginia Education Broadband Grant awards totaling $270,000 to nine Virginia school districts.
Each winning school district was awarded $30,000, which can be used to implement a combination of “Kajeet Education Broadband solutions, including Wi-Fi hotspots, school bus Wi-Fi, LTE-embedded Chromebooks, and routers,” in their schools.
“We are thrilled for the winning districts and congratulate all the applicants looking to increase connectivity for their students,” said Daniel Neal, CEO and Founder of Kajeet. “Our partnership with VBSA is a significant way for us to stay focused on closing the homework gap that exists for far too many students in Virginia. We look forward to seeing how this investment will change lives.”
The grant awards also focus on getting reliable internet accesses to those students that have a historically struggled to obtain access to them, and to create more equitable circumstance for these students.
“Roughly 60 percent of the households in the city of Harrisonburg with school-age children, do not have broadband internet access at home,” said Tony Sheets, Executive Director of Technology at Harrisonburg City Schools.
The nine winning school districts are:
Southside – Goochland County Public Schools;
Tidewater – Williamsburg/James City County Public Schools;
Eastern – Essex County Public Schools;
Northeastern – Fredericksburg City Public Schools;
Central – Nelson County Public Schools;
Southern – Lunenburg County Public Schools;
Blue Ridge – Botetourt County Public Schools;
Southwest – Tazewell County Public Schools; and
Valley – Harrisonburg City Public Schools.
