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Comment by dugmartin | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in Southern Illinois near this school district and now live in Western Mass in a school district facing the same problem. We are the largest district geographically in the state and have lots of rural students with no access to the Internet. My wife is an elementary school reading specialist and can’t get in contact with many of her kids. The number one concern for the state Ed leaders is “equity” which for now, while the schools are physically closed, means no online education for anyone in our district.

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We are also very rural with many families with no internet. Instead of eLearning, we have printed packets available for pickup at the front office. For those with internet, the same packets are available online.

Same. We had to hand out our first packet to students the last day we were in class (had less than 24 hours to make them, it's a minor miracle our notoriously broken copier didn't break), and then we had to put our next two weeks online, so that the principle could print out copies to have available while they're working at the school still.

I recently learned about School of the Air ¹, where classes were conducted by radio for children of rural areas in Australia. I wonder if something like that could be a temporary solution for rural America, until Internet infrastructure reaches those areas.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Air

I teach in a district that has a good portion of kids without internet access (even on phones) and, as things stand, there's no 'until'. It'll never happen. The families are either too poor to afford internet costs, or they're so rural that no company will go lay line; it's just not profitable. This is exactly why the government needs to step in an declare Internet access a utility and make sure everyone can get access (not to mention it's basically the only way to apply for jobs anymore).

We need to make it affordable to live in cities via better zoning, not continue to subsidize people living in the middle of nowhere.

Rural living is a cultural choice, not a purely economic one. The "subsidies" you mention, I would bet, are far below those given to large corporations in this country who surely have the capital to expand to these "middle of nowhere" places.

The biggest corporate subsidies go to agriculture, oil, and ethanol production, all of which disproportionately benefit people in rural areas already. And that's in addition to the direct cash grants of federal tax money that rural states depend on to fund their state budgets.

I'm not sure if I agree with this, for multiple reasons; it also stinks of classicism and a superiority complex. Besides, even if you made living more affordable in urban areas, that doesn't mean people will necessarily move there. People are complex beings and aren't going to just pick up and move as much as economists, among others, tend to think for better job opportunities. There are other things that tie people to places For instance, one reason I live where I do is because my entire family is there, and being around them is something I consider important, especially with my aging grandmother after my grandfather's passing.

The USA idea of rural is different than the rest of the first world. The rest live predominately in small villages, while US rural live in spread-out individual homesteads. It's not cost-effective to provide services out there; they don't have city sewer, often wells instead of city water even. Today many can't afford to live in cities because of artificial limits, but we should fix that and let people that continue to choose to handicap themselves, pay for their own services.

> It'll never happen. It's just not profitable.

I see, thank you for the dose of realism. That makes sense, there's no financial incentive in providing Internet to rural areas.

(I'd argue that there is long-term economic incentive for regional prosperity, not necessarily profitable for a company though.)

> The government needs to step in and declare Internet access a utility.

Totally agree, and a good argument for it. Internet access is (becoming) fundamental to communication, education, labor market, and myriad other social functions - everyone deserves access to it, as much as water and electricity. The current situation is unfair for people in rural areas, especially children "without internet access (even on phones)". They're cut off from a wealth of information that people in cities take for granted.

There is literally no excuse for this in 2020.

Funding for rural telecom has been part of every budget for decades. Write a proposal and get it funded.

https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs/telec...

And then get sued into oblivion by frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit from the big names, who have the budget to wear yours out.

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