The FCC has committed more than $81 million the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) awards to support about 170,000 students in Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Washington and the District of Columbia.
The ECF was created by the American Rescue Plan to support off-campus activities such as homework. It is administered by school districts and libraries. To date, approximately $5.8 billion of an eventual total of $7.17 billion has been committed.
The most recent award will support more than 300 schools, 25 libraries and two consortia. The awards came from the third of three application windows.
To date, the program has provided funding to about 10,000 schools, 900 libraries, and 100 consortia. It has provided almost 12 million connected devices and more than 7 million broadband connections. About $4.1 billion has come from Window 1, $800 million from Window 2 and $893 million from Window 3.
“With students heading back to classrooms this fall, we need to make sure all our kids can connect with teachers and homework assignments when school ends for the day,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a press release about the ECF awards. “This latest round of funding will help make that happen, and bring us closer to closing the Homework Gap.”
In July, the ECF awarded more than $266 million to support more than 1 million students and library patrons in Delaware, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York and Oregon. More than $12 million of support came from the first and second application windows and more than $254 million came from the third application window.
On the first day of that month, the ECF awarded funding to support more than 300,000 students and library patrons in Alabama, Guam, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Texas and West Virginia. Almost $2 million came from the first two application windows. The bulk of the awards – almost $157 million – came from the third application window.
