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OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – More than 100 school districts across Oklahoma have been awarded mobile internet access and devices following a competitive grant process.

On Friday, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister announced that 175 Oklahoma school districts have been awarded mobile internet access and devices through 50,000 Verizon Unlimited 4GE data plans and Jetpacks.

“This pandemic has underscored the inequities of the digital divide that hinder opportunities for so many of our children,” said Hofmeister. “We know one-fourth of our students lack reliable home internet access. Many districts have used a portion of the funds allocated to them under the CARES Act to purchase a sufficient number of devices for every student to have access to technology, an effort we encouraged through incentive grants earlier this summer. But a device without connectivity is like a book in a pitch-dark room. We are grateful that this partnership with Verizon and OneNet will make a critical difference in ensuring many thousands of children and families will now have the opportunity for robust distance learning.”

The Oklahoma State Department of Education grants leveraged a portion of the agency’s set-aside monies to help ensure all students have connectivity to access online learning if community spread of COVID-19 requires districts to transition to distance learning.

As a partner in the OSDE initiative, OneNet will provide, at no cost to districts, content filtering and technical support to facilitate the telecom connection between Verizon and the state telecom network. OneNet is assuming the $250,000 value of this support as a contribution to the OSDE initiative and the students in districts awarded the hotspots.

Districts receiving the devices, which Verizon sold to OSDE at a discounted rate, will assign and deploy them under specific requirements. For example, districts awarded hotspots must pay a nominal monthly service fee for unlimited 4G LTE data service for each awarded device for at least six months and assure that devices are assigned only to low-income students.

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