Good morning to everyone and welcome to the New America Foundation. My name is Kevin Carey. I'm the director of the Education Policy Program. We have a really terrific program here this morning. We really appreciate all of you coming down to spend some time with us. The thing we're going to be talking about is an area that's of great interest actually to two of the programs here at the New America Foundation, the Education Policy Program and also the Open Technology Institute, both of which are committed to providing enhanced access to the highest quality education to children across the United States of America. And today we're here to talk about a specific part of that challenge, which is the Federal Communications Commission's E-Rate program. E-Rate, as you know, helps provide ubiquitous and affordable access to communications technologies at schools and libraries throughout the United States, and as the Federal Communications Commission now moves to modernize the E-Rate program to meet the technological needs of schools and libraries moving into the 21st century, we all recognize that a nuanced understanding of both the education landscape and the technological considerations will be necessary for meaningful reform. So we're here to talk this morning about the evolving role of schools and libraries in the age of digital learning, about how to invest in a 21st century infrastructure to support online learning, and we all understand that these are areas where E-Rate will play a major role. So we have a great panel this morning, we have a diverse group of representatives from education, from library sciences, and the technology communities all to kind of come together and bring their different perspectives to this issue. And we are very fortunate to have former FCC Chairman Reid Hunt with us, who is going to start the conversation. As I'm sure you all know, during Chairman Hunt's tenure at the FCC, he saw over implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which established the E-Rate program and also changed telecommunications in America in ways that we're all still feeling, and we know that throughout his career Chairman Hunt has been a tremendous advocate for universal connectivity, and we're very pleased to have us with him this morning. Before we start, a few things I want to especially thank the Urban Libraries Council for their partnership in today's event. This event is being live streamed, and a recording of the event will be available on the New America Foundation website after the event is over. And for those of you in the room and out watching us on the Internet, we'd encourage you to continue the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag connected communities. So again, on behalf of New America, I welcome all of you, and we are going to begin with some remarks from Chairman Hunt. Thank you all very, very much. It's a great thrill to be here thanks to New America for pulling us all together. There are many, many experts in the fields of libraries, the fields of knowledge in the room. I really should acknowledge each and every one of you, and you'll have to forgive me because I just want to recognize the wisdom and the passion that's here, and then talk to you directly about the history and the future, or more precisely the future and how the history can inform it of the of the e-rate. I think that we're at a momentous and completely fantastic moment in history because we have new technologies of communication and new techniques of digitization that have come together with a very spirited executive branch and a very spirited administrative agency and a well-meaning Congress to to ask us all to reimagine what could and should be done with the e-rate. And all these technologies are out there for all of us to say, well, what can we do with them? How should they be used? How can we produce a completely transformative experience of learning and knowledge acquisition for all Americans? That's where we are right now. That's where we are right now. I want to talk to you particularly from the library vantage point where I've learned so much from Susan Benton, the CO of the Urban Libraries Council, from Susan Hildreth over at IMLS, and as I said many others here in this room and who are not here but are represented in spirit. So what's the particular useful way I would humbly suggest to think about the role of libraries in terms of the Internet? There are 90 million adult Americans who are not in the workforce. That is the biggest number in the history of our country. It is the biggest percentage of adults not in the workforce in the history of our country. There are two reasons. One is demographic. It's the baby boomers like me who are moving into retirement. I don't seem to be one of an example of that but it is certain to happen to all of us and it's a big large demographic group that is leaving the workforce. The other reason is not as inevitable and is something that the whole country is still dealing with and that is we have a very, very large number of people who are unemployed. The percentage has been going down during the Obama administration but the quantity because it's a percentage of a bigger population is a very, very large multi-million number. We also have a large number of adult Americans who are sort of in the workforce, part-time, menial jobs and when you add all these adults together you have more than 100 million Americans who do not have broadband access at work. They are not sitting at desks. They are not all wired up the way the businesses have wired up everybody else. I'm not talking now about school age children. I'm not talking about a different and equally compelling problem which is what do we do to meld new technologies with the education experience. I'm talking about adult Americans. Now none of us knew at the time that the e-rate was conceived at the time that it was passed none of us knew that what would happen now 17 years later what would happen is that libraries would become the number one public internet access point in the entire civic landscape but actually almost everybody involved with the e-rate thought it probably would happen but no one knew that it would be such a big fact no one knew that the only alternatives that would be available for free public internet access would be it's not free by telling somebody well you know you don't have a job why don't you go buy a cappuccino and sit for a couple of hours in the Starbucks that's not a generous charitable or frankly workable solution that's not a workable solution so libraries have come to play a role in the internet society that we all are now part of that is that is of inexpressible significance as we think about that particular role I also know that everybody here knows that libraries themselves have evolved to be places not just of providing access to information but of hosting experiences of many many different kinds teaching English as a second language providing educational resources that build community people go there to learn and there are many many other structural reasons in our society why libraries are the forms for these activities but all of these developments only emphasize the critical nature of solving the problem of providing this this huge flow of information to and from libraries because this is the place for the hundred million Americans who you cannot say go get that broadband at work now you all might say to me why don't they have broadband at home and I would say the following to you the statistics are actually that about one-third of all American households don't have broadband at home and so it turns out that we're dealing with thirds here about a third of all Americans are adult Americans who don't have broadband at work and about a third of all homes don't have broadband at home are they the exact same third I haven't done the statistical study we could do the statistical study it's going to turn out that these two sets overlap hugely because most of people of retirement age don't have very much money and because it goes without saying that if you're unemployed you're not saying why don't I spend $200 on the triple play from the cable company per month so that's the problem statement I'm not talking about children and I'm not demeaning or in any way belittling that problem I'm saying that what's happened is that the that the problem or opportunity of internet access and libraries has become very clearly different in degree and kind and importance from the problem of providing the internet in educational institutions so what is to be done first I think it has to be recognized that it's necessary for everybody in government who's in the business of being data driven and making decisions based on data and necessary for everybody in the library community to figure out how to describe what is the current condition I respectfully submit that a useful measurement would be what is the bandwidth available per user at peak hours in libraries bandwidth per user peak hours bandwidth per user peak hours why do I say that why do I talk about peak hours because when it's really hot in the summer and everybody turns the air conditioning on nobody expects the electricity industry to say these are peak hours really you just really need to be unhappy right now and so let's not have any electricity during these peak hours nobody expects any utility anywhere in the economy to plan for non-peak hours everybody expects all utilities in every place in the economy roads at times of heavy traffic colleges when people really want to apply and really want to go everybody expects utilities to plan for peak hours why shouldn't they expect libraries to plan for peak hours in terms of per user you can have a lot of bandwidth for a million people and when they all share it it ends up with hardly anything for anybody or you can have just five megabits for a library that happens to have one person in it and that's plenty so just saying well the fiber carries these many bits to the door that's not the answer we need to know the bandwidth per user now these measurements which may be unusual for the world of education are utterly completely normal for every business in the United States and are done all the time on every single campus there's a company called ASIA ASSIA that has developed a free software application I'm on the board that's how I know that they did it it's was developed so that the businesses that buy ASIA to increase bandwidth and pay would have a way of measuring the difference between what is and what should be but this could be used by any library you it's an app a free app on a smartphone take the application stand in the room look at it and it will tell you well you're only getting 126 kilobits a second or whatever is the outcome and we don't have to do it in every single library every single hour there are statistically valid techniques so we need to know what is and when we look at what is I know what we're going to find from all the anecdotes that I've been showered with for the last year which is we're going to find that what is is so slow that in fact the learning experiences in these peak hours really are impossible really impossible you can't go watch I mean this is a thing that that I do but it's really stupid but I'll all my examples that are personal are stupid so I'll share my stupid example but I have enrolled on YouTube for a course called minute physics minute physics and my theory with minute physics is if it's more than a minute I can't take it in so you watch the minute physics and they they say things like you know how come like things fall to the ground oh it's gravity this is a great learning experience for me but all kidding aside whatever you want to learn on the internet you can't learn it unless you have enough bandwidth to have that communication come to you and that's a case of video and when you're dealing with 100 kilobits a second you you can't do it just physically can't be done can't be done you can't fill out an application for obama care you can't interact with social security you can't participate in society you know I'm not here to make jokes about or to support obama care I am here to make a point about obama care it's the first national public program that was completely internet based from the beginning all national programs and all state programs from this day forth will always be primarily and maybe exclusively based on the internet to participate in any way at all in any of the interactions in society at the government level or the business level or the social level from a couple of years ago to the indefinite future you have to be on broadband so first we have to measure what is and compare it to what needs to be right now and then we get to thing number two I spent a lot of time in silicon valley I'm very blessed to have had a whole number of learning experiences be way beyond minute physics I'm on the board of intel I've been on the board for 12 years every 18 months we've doubled the price performance of semiconductor parts and it is the fundamental driving force that lies behind technology expansion what does that have to do with the internet the faster and faster we compute the faster and faster the computers demand the information that's the deal the faster and faster we can compute the faster and faster the information has to come into the computers to be calculated those computers that are doing the calculations are doing more and more amazing things but you can't have your computer do any of those things for you unless your connection to the internet keeps up with the increase in the speed of calculation of the computers that is the fundamental reason why the computing world is pulling more and more bandwidth into all of its activities and redesigning constantly all the devices so that they don't work unless they get faster and faster bandwidth go back to the automobile industry the engines get better and better and better and then every other part has to be upgraded to including all the roads have to be upgraded so that they can handle the cars driving in the new ways that they're driving we're talking here about roads we're talking about bandwidth it has to get better and better every single year that means we first have to define the difference between what is and what needs to be right now and figure out how to pay for that in the most efficient manner possible and then we have to figure out how we constantly increase access that is public and free at the same or even better pace that it's happening in the commercial sector because why would we want to repeat and this is my little part about the past why would we want to repeat the mistake of the e-rate that I am partly responsible or maybe only responsible for in 1997 here's the mistake so when we thought of the e-rate and I was just a lieutenant in the army of thinkers it was right at the dawn the salad days of the commercial internet the beginning of 1994 and republicans and democrats in congress and algore in the white house we all got together and said this is an amazing thing this internet it's really going to be really really big the total percentage of internet users in the united states at the time was two percent they were almost all in the academy or mci which was a leader in this field and everybody in the government republicans and democrats said it's going to be absolutely huge the reason we thought it is because the technology world literally came to washington and said please do not blow this please do not get this wrong this is really really big make sure that it helps everybody so olympia rocker olympia snow and jay rockefeller olympia on the republican side and jay on the democratic side in the senate commerce committee a bunch of people in the house gore the FCC chairman that's me a bunch of people in the department of commerce we spent a lot of time and we came up with one principle this technology that is destined to sweep the world and destined to connect everybody to every piece of information ought to be the first technology in the history of learning that is deployed in schools and libraries at the same time and in the same pace as it's deployed in business that was the driving principle that is why in the 1996 telecom act the word that congress used with respect to libraries rural health care and schools is the word should the high speed access should be deployed and that meant we had to continually have it be that it was at the same pace as it was growing as the medium of communications that it has now become for the whole world now we didn't know how big to size it in 1997 we did a big study with mckinsey it was not just made up and we decided two things it would be done by matching grants if a library or a school couldn't think of anyone to match with then they must not care enough for the money the matching grants would be weighted so that if you were from a poor area you didn't have to have as big a match as if you were from a rich area and then number two the total money that would be matched would be about two billion dollars but here's what we didn't didn't know what to do about and didn't successfully craft a formula for increasing the amount as the cost and demands increased and so we did not embed that in the program I'm sorry and it was it was we just didn't know how to do it so we thought we would leave it to future generations now on the good side when you add the two billion approximately that we decided to start with and the roughly two billion that's matched with that's four billion and when you look at the entire program which it's now amounted to about a 60 billion dollars spend it is the single biggest spending for education and libraries and schools that has ever occurred in the United States other than the GI Bill so that's good and it's also good that uh uh not many years ago but a few years ago a escalator was put in but still what's happened is that the increases now are way below the increases on the demand side so problem number one I respectfully submit is let's measure the difference between what is and what needs to be right now and problem number two is let's figure out how to have a thoughtful way to go forward and keep up with the increases on the demand side these are the two challenges for this community there are also challenges for government and there are challenges that I have to say I just think it's going to be wonderful when we gather about a year from now and say what do you know uh we've figured these things out and what do you know we got the votes at the FCC and what do you know uh we've we've built the infrastructure or the framing of the infrastructure that's going to survive for generations because that's exactly what happened in 1997 and now we have a new generation and a new opportunity and we can be hugely successful thank you very much um I'd like to invite the panelists to come on up and um we will move to uh the discussion and thank you Reed for that um very thoughtful introduction to the e-rate program and its important history um and uh I'll go ahead and uh introduce my uh we won't forget about you Reed and so I'll do a quick introduction of of the panelists up here I'm Sarah Morris I'm the Senior Policy Counsel for the Open Technology Institute and um we've been collaborating at the at OTI with the Education Policy Program at New America to work through um some of the challenges of the e-rate reform process but what's really exciting to me is um one of the things that is important to OTI and important to New America more broadly is this idea of broadening conversations to include um additional constituencies and um to really look at problems uh as as an ecosystem and um to come up with solutions that address things comprehensively rather than looking at issues in a vacuum and so that's why I'm very thrilled to have um this diverse awesome panel up here and um I will introduce them from uh the other end of the stage we have Richard Coulada Richard is the Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education next to him we have Susan Hildreth the Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences next to her we have Melanie Huggins CEO of Richard Library in South Carolina and next to her we have Pam Moran Superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia and finally um Greta Byram who is a senior field analyst here at the Open Technology Institute so welcome and so I want to start um to give the the panelists a chance to introduce their themselves and their work by um throwing out a question for the group um but you did tell us a little bit about why you're here and what this idea of connected community means to you and to your work um let's start with Richard okay um so uh why I'm here we have a lot of work that needs to be done we need a lot of people to do it so so I'm recruiting that's just just to be open right open and blunt on the table but we need a lot of uh a lot of help and by recruiting I mean uh getting those of you in the room and those that are watching this to say I get how I'm a part of the changes that need to happen and how can I uh join in and participate and and uh what I mean there is it is entirely possible as we look at this idea of creating connected communities it is entirely possible to get uh very focused on infrastructure technical infrastructure which is extremely important we'll talk more hopefully over over this panel about some of the changes to e-rate that are happening some of the other other work that's underway but in that process get so focused on the technical infrastructure that we forget things like the human infrastructure and how are we preparing people and teachers and librarians uh and students and parents to be able to create connected communities and how are we making sure uh there are uh sort of rich engaging interacting learning opportunities that are happening and you'll you'll hear some examples there's many that we can point to but uh not enough and so we really need everybody who is hearing this and friends of yours and colleagues of yours that are not here hearing this to understand that if we nail the infrastructure if we end up a year later congratulating ourselves because we fix this infrastructure problem we got it all done and don't address the issues of how are we pulling people together and thinking about how do we engage youth how do we engage teachers how do we engage librarians um arguably we have not moved forward as much as we need to and so that's my uh goal in this conversation and I hope we can continue to talk about how we do that and I would love to leave here with ideas and thoughts from you on how we can make that happen well good morning everybody it's really wonderful to be here and um you know I'm here because really a connected community for me the library is a critical piece of a healthy and thriving community in the 21st century um but I have to say that the comments that we heard by chairman hunt were so um so important and so convincing that I am almost speechless in terms of all my talking points so so he's really made the case very well for libraries but just to reiterate that you know particularly uh libraries have been uh the point of free access to the internet for the general public our students our our college students lifelong learners all kinds of folks and we still know that in our rural communities we know that 70% of our in our rural communities are the only free internet access in their communities so I think we know all these facts we know why it's important to have a robust connectivity in our communities and I think what I just want to spend a little bit of time talking about is the importance and the acknowledgement of libraries as critical elements in our educational infrastructure and I think that uh although I know everyone here in the audience and everybody who's listening in on the web I think understands that there's still a large gap in that understanding I think in our community and country at large many people still have the traditional view of the library and don't really understand how much we are a critical element of keeping all of our citizens up to date for all ages so I just I want to make sure that wherever I go I talk about the critical educational role that libraries and also museums that's my other hat play and and the fabulous content we have to share and discover and give opportunities for content content creation all of which cannot succeed without great connectivity but I'm here to make sure that all of us out there as as Richard said you know get on the bandwagon and understand that our libraries are continuing to play their important role of their community's university for everybody and community hubs and anchors well I'm I'm thrilled to be here I'm in my day job I'm the director of the Richland library in Columbia South Carolina and I'm sitting beside a fellow South Carolinian which is really awesome too we just we just found that out about each other but I'm also the the chair of the board of the urban libraries council so in that capacity you know I see the good work that libraries are doing across North America among all of our members and I you know I can obviously reiterate everything that's been said so far but there's there's something that I've been thinking a lot about lately which is not just mapping current state and how to make everything from the e-rate formula better and just and more more more capacity there for libraries but it's about what the future of communities needs to be so for example we we in our own library we already know you know what our bandwidth is and that it's not enough and that things are slow and peak hours and we have aspirations to you know be from a hundred megabit to five thousand within the the next couple years which is going to be tremendous if we can get there but I'm thinking about 10 years from now we're focusing so much on libraries being not just places to store content but for people to create content and share that content throughout the world and that takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth capacity to be able to do that so it's making the shift from being places to store it where we're actually encouraging our communities to create it to make it to share it to present it to perform it whatever those things are and I just I we're not getting there fast enough for us to make that cultural shift in our programming in our services because we don't have the bandwidth to support it now so I'm interested to hear what other people are doing and and obviously to lend any support and help that I can to the the effort. Thanks Melanie Pan. I just I don't know where to begin it just is there are so many things that I'm thinking about right now and the first was that I was a little like getting up here because I was retweeting out to connected communities a tweet that I just received from MHS weather which is a group of kids at Monticello High School back in Albemarle Virginia who have created a YouTube video on how we close or delay schools so I'd love to be able to watch their video but you can do that and what I think that really speaks to is the dream that perhaps at e-rate when it was first initialized as something that we would be able to access as school division actually had in mind and maybe nobody knew then when you said that the internet is a tech of learning of what that would look like today but for me walking up here it looks like Jack and his buds who have formed their own meteorology team and basically email me or tweet to me what the weather is going to look like and suggest whether I should open close the delay school is I think a great representation of the possibilities that were dreamed back in 1997 at the same time I will tell you the story that I think also is representative of the challenges I think that Jack and his friends represent the dreams of what can go on in schools I think Cherise Morris who went to Brown University two years ago represents the challenges in Albemarle County 726 square miles we surround the University of Virginia we have the Blue Ridge on one side we have the Piedmont of Virginia on the other that we have every challenge and every success possibility of any probably school district or community in the United States because we have significant swaths of the community that can't connect and we have significant swaths of the community that can't but the reality is that Cherise grew up in Esmont Virginia which is one of our places where AT&T and Verizon and all the folks that are out there as commercials have no interest in that community because they are not a community that has enough people to really support making any money so the reality is in that part of Albemarle County both the geographic challenges as well as just the the density challenges of the people kept Cherise from being able to cut to make connectivity happen in her own home child living in an economically disadvantaged environment and she has shared her story very publicly and would feel very comfortable with me sharing with you today I had a teacher in a school that recognized Cherise's capability and what this teacher did was that she gave Cherise an old cell phone. Cherise in her school because of the fact that we have really prioritized focusing on having internet connectivity in our schools was able to both file all of her applications for college as well as her BAPSA application she ended up full boat ride to Brown University but this is a kid who was so challenged to be able to have that kind of connectivity in her own home that she would come to school early in the morning catch a ride with a friend and stay late so that she could do the work that she needed to do in a school setting I think that represents the challenges of communities today but also represents the success stories of schools that have connectivity we have really looked at our libraries in our schools as a first line of connection out to the greater community as well we partner with the Jefferson Madison Regional Library system and do some shared servicing our kids we register all of our third graders as patrons of our regional library system in exchange we get to download from overdrive ebooks etc for our kids but one of the things that we've really tried to do is to figure out how can we have shared services with our libraries also interestingly with our police department we make all of our school sites our internet capabilities are accessible to our police department so that when they're riding around and they need to stop and get online they can pull up in our parking lots and they can get on their computers and log in and do their reporting we also are looking at how we can build hot spots out in places across the community we've talked about what would it look like to have hot spots in parks what would it look like to have hot spots in places where kids can get or our community members can get but I will tell you probably the most interesting things that we're doing and we're not real certain exactly how we're doing this because we don't know anybody else that is doing this we took our educational broad bed spectrum back from leasing it just a couple of years ago we're now building out as a school division our own oops there goes my stack of technology we're now building out our own EBS spectrum to connect our community and we're figuring that out as a school division because we know we can't wait on our commercial sector to do that and what we want is for our kids to be able whatever device either they have in their home or that we can put in their hands to be able to take those home and do their homework connect with their peers access our public library system museums around the world to do the work that we believe was probably the dream that you had but maybe not known at that point in time in 1997 that's what we need help with is to figure out how do we do that and do it well okay thanks him sorry um so hi everybody I am here representing the open technology institute at the new america foundation and I am here all the way from upstairs today to talk about our work in the field of you know really thinking about broadband connectivity and what it does for communities my particular area of work within the open technology institute is the field team of the field operations team and you might ask why a dc think tank has a field operations team it's definitely an unusual kind of activity to happen within an institution like this and the answer is that we found that in order to really feel like we were making policy recommendations that were informed by reality we needed to really understand what was going on in communities so we really wanted to understand stories like pams so what's really happening with people and what we found in that work you know some of the ways that we we have done that work is through programs like the broadband technology opportunities program which we'll talk about more I'm sure but that was a federal stimulus program part of the national broadband plan and brought infrastructure as well as broadband adoption training and public computer centers to communities across the country so we worked with the b-top program as both conveners of coalitions applying for funding and also as evaluators on that program so we would do things like hold focus groups with people who are using these resources both in Detroit and in Philadelphia which was the two sites where we worked and in those focus groups we would hear people saying things like you know I learn better when when the person who's teaching me is someone that I can relate to someone that I feel comfortable with and we started to really see the importance of you know beyond just giving people technology or giving them curriculum there's a whole kind of range I guess you're done hello okay so I was just saying there's a whole range of social support needs that people have in order to really engage in an active learning experience feel comfortable with technological tools and have the kinds of experiences that folks here were speaking about and I just want to underline something that Richard said about human infrastructure right so we have a very similar concept that we have derived from our work directly with communities which is what we call social infrastructure so it's a very similar notion it's about what it takes for people to be to be active learners and it goes beyond perhaps just what I could just use pams for now okay this is awesome active learning so the role of institutions the role that institutions also play in this and those institutions are what we call it community anchor institutions so schools and libraries are really important community anchors there are other kinds of community anchors but these are the both the brick and mortar institutions and also the social networks that provide the kind of support that people need to be active learners and to feel engaged and supported as they learn and you know as they become meaningful adopters of broadband meaning which to us means not just that they have a subscription in their home but also that they feel comfortable using technology and they're able to access the kinds of tools and resources that they need so I'm really excited to thanks Pam I'm really excited to be here with all of you because I think in a way all of us kind of represent this sort of field operations work where we are actually interfacing with people in communities and making sure that policies respond to real needs and are you know are supporting people in the way that best can lift all boats thanks credit that was a very fantastic sharing of connectivity that just happened up here so thank you guys that was all that was a fabulous introduction from from all of you and I want to dig into some of these concepts a little bit more deeply Pam you did a wonderful job of talking about how your community is using technology and the various tools that emerged as a result in the success stories and challenges that you've seen I'd like to open that question expand on that a little bit with some of our other panelists particularly Melanie and Greta but also anyone who has these types of stories because we we do focus a lot on connectivity and what that connectivity looks like and what that means and that's the crux of our recommendations from OTI to the to the commission but I also think that the other side of that and what really drives that need is is the use and and what that technology can bring to communities so I'd like to dig in a little bit more if if folks are willing yeah I can start with that you know I make a lot of assumptions when you get a lot of smart people in the room that you all know what public libraries do in the 21st century but Reed's probably one of the smartest guys I know and he'll even tell you that he's learned a lot about what we do over the last month or so so I'll just start by saying that you know our library system is one main library in 10 branches we serve a population of about 400,000 people across 700 square miles we have very rural communities within Columbia South Carolina as well as very urban and suburban so everything in between 8,000 visits a day throughout the library system to our branches we have 400 computers that support those visits and 50 of those are dedicated in one space to business and job development we are fortunate with some funding that we received from the Knight Foundation years ago that we have a full-time career counselor on staff a full-time job readiness trainer on staff and those 50 computers are used almost every hour that we are open from 9 o'clock in the morning till 9 o'clock at night we're open that that's our hours most days and those computers are used and those folks that come in to use them are doing everything from practicing interviewing online where your videotaped and get to see what you look like interviewing to developing resumes to filling out job applications to starting business we even just opened a co-working center in our main library so that is the kind of work that we've been doing for years I think we're doing it in a more coordinated way now and partnering with everyone from the Department of Employment and Workforce to the universities to small business incubators throughout the community so I don't want to make the assumption that you all know that that's what we do that's that's just what libraries do now that's just a daily part of our of our life and activity you know and different scales and different sizes across the country we also are doing so much more work around getting kids to think beyond high school so not just about high school graduation but what's that next step because you can't get them to graduate from high school if they don't see any future beyond it is really if they don't see the value in it so a lot more partnerships with community schools and and organizations but we've dedicated a lot of resources and technology to teens and young people in our library like many libraries across the country we now have a dedicated creative technology space for teens with 3d printers you know music production software a vocal booth and we're constantly bringing in experts in the community experts in filmmaking coming in and doing programs with our teens and showing them how to do animation and make films and edit them but then that's that beautiful content this is where I was talking about when I started it needs to live somewhere it needs to not just be developed for the sake of going through the process but where can a teen build that portfolio of information and content that they've created so that when they get ready to go and apply for college not only do we help them with the FAFSA form and do all that but we also have this wonderful body of work that takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth to do that and to store it and the more things that go to the cloud the more bandwidth we need so it's you know it's just that kind of conundrum that we can foresee some really innovative things that we could be doing with our populations and we are building the human capacity we know that librarians don't have all the skill sets that we need them to have to do this work but we're bringing in partners and educators and creative types all over the place to make that work so those are just two examples I will tell you that we did a survey throughout South Carolina recently to see how people were using computers in South Carolina libraries on a daily basis 2,000 people a day walk into a South Carolina library to use the computer for business and job related activity and right below that and this is what you know we should surprise no one in this room was health health related research applying for Medicaid applying for Medicare managing their relationship with their doctors researching their own conditions health was there and then the third banking people using those public not private infrastructures for managing their finances so when you think about that and you think about how essential those things are to all of us in this room and how we take for granted that we're able to do those things you know very seamlessly that says to me that capacity and connectivity is as essential as any other utility that we have whether it be electricity or water so those are just a couple of examples of what we're doing in our library you know it's it's really interesting that you say that I guess that this might now now you're dead ah technology yeah that's one of the things that that we find because we we made the decision we are probably one of the most unfiltered school divisions anywhere in the United States and one of the things that that we also did very purposefully just a few years ago was that we divided our wireless access in our school so that we have a guest easy access walk into our schools you can log on is how many parents come into our schools and use that as a part of their work that they're doing in a variety of ways that have nothing to do with their child in school but when you think about how many school divisions have gone to online portals for everything about their child and how many parents are still living in places where they don't have access and so you see that digital divide that plays out is not just about the kids but it is also about the families and the greater community but the kinds of things that I also see as divides and and we have very purposefully gone after using our capital improvements money as a school division and our e-rate money and a little bit of money that we get from the state of Virginia to say that one of the most important things that we do is to provide access in our schools so we've made very conscious decisions to make cuts in areas that don't impact that as we've all gone through the recessionary years as the rest of the country has but the kinds of things that we see our kids doing today and I think about when I talk to teachers who either talk about how they don't have access because of filtering systems in their school divisions are they just flat or still literally without wireless technology at all a great example is I had a teacher a third grade teacher just three years ago who had a kid asked the question when they were doing a simple machines unit in third grade is a straw as simple machine this teacher happens to have a twitter account mr teaclass and rather than telling the kids what he thought he said let's ask the world and the kids put that question out with in a matter of just a few hours they had a nasa astronaut who picked it up down in the who was on the ground down in uh uh texas who responded they had scientists from the new york hall of science they had physicists from the university of knottingham and a host of people weigh in on that it got to be so hot and and fast in terms of the and 140 characters couldn't do it they opened up a google doc and all these people started putting this in now the kids are in class testing this themselves at the same time the teacher is interpreting with the kids what all these people are saying that are weighing in one of the things that's pretty fascinating is that because that google doc was made public and the link is just out there people are continuing to add to it and every now and then we continue to go back to it in the system and take a look at it but what's the conclusion is it a well you know what this is pretty fascinating the scientists said that at the time when simple machines were conceptualized that there were questions that were not being asked that technology today causes you to ask so they argued about it and you know what they never resolved the response to it but the thing that I think is fascinating whether it's kids Skyping with a scientist who's in Antarctica or I watched a issues in modern world class at one of our high schools during the the Egyptian revolution they were were connecting over the internet via Skype with an Egyptologist during that period of time who was kind of boots on the ground in that revolution they were able to Skype with this man over the course of the year I walked in in March after this had been going on and watched the kids Skype and the sky was pretty demoralized because they were about to go into the election and you know there was controversy over the fact that that some of the folks that were running were going to take them in different directions and the sky was really demoralized about it and when they got off of the Skype these kids regular just regular all-american kids looked at each other and said do you think our forefathers ever felt that maybe things weren't going so well in our revolution and I thought all of a sudden the American Revolution here we are home of Thomas Jefferson out of Mount County Virginia became so real for these kids in a way that would have never occurred without connectivity and I believe as a superintendent that every kid in the United States of America deserves to have those experiences in their schools and when they go home at night and they want to continue those conversations and access their public libraries and museums around the world and for us to not do that denies our kids something that I love this quote by Michelle Mitchell Baker who's with Mozilla and she said the internet is the structure of modern life so you think about anchoring the physical infrastructure in what Richard talked about which is the people structure I think that really captures it and to not do what we need to do as a nation puts us in a position of you talk about no child left behind no nation left behind based on the data that we have from around the world today that's why we do it is for our kids not just an outlaw but everywhere yeah great I just follow up on that I think those are really important points and I love those examples and to me that sounds like best case scenario it's an awesome awesome kind of example I think there are a lot of schools that that aren't able to get there yet that you know they can look to examples like this and stories like this for inspiration but it brings to mind something for me which is around literacy right so what do we mean when we say digital literacy these kids are very very digitally literate and access is part of developing that kind of literacy but there's a lot of things that people need to learn for instance if they're using libraries for banking and for public health you know information exchange people need to learn about the basics of privacy with regard to using public computer facilities so you know what I think there's a deeper dive that needs that needs to go in I think you mentioned partnerships and ways to kind of you know do skill sharing and information sharing to build the kinds of tools that we need to develop literacy but you know that's I think a conversation that really needs to happen alongside the conversation about infrastructure you know kids are digital emissaries what role could they play in bringing some of these skills and some of this knowledge home to their parents and and you know in improving the lot of all the families in the community if I could just add quickly to that and I think you're that's so true about the work that needs to be done there but I want to make sure everyone knows that one of the key priorities for the Institute of Museum and Library Services is digital inclusion for all so we have a number of documents on our website imls.gov about creating digital understanding and awareness in a community why we want to be connected in our community and we also have supported through working with partners nationally a lot of work on digital literacy for all ages so it is a big issue and we're making a difference there and also particularly circling back to Reed's comments about our adults we also have to work with adult literacy in terms of digital literacy yes but also basic literacy and this is a huge factor with the unemployed population how can we use our technology to help them be skilled and competent for the workforce so digital literacy is a huge issue that I think you know as one of our key federal priorities we're working on that constantly but we can always use help with everybody out there so help join the struggle the challenge great and I think that that helps paint a very interesting and nuanced picture about what the role technology about the role that technology plays in in the development of learning tools and social tools and basic life tools in our every everyday lives I want to shift a little bit we've talked about the benefits of technology and how we're using technology I want to ground this a little bit in the actual reform process that's happening and to turn back so the I think we have some handouts hopefully everyone who wanted one got one explaining sort of the the timeline and process that's gone into this connect ed slash e-rate reform effort that's being led both by the administration and the FCC and while a large part of that is the actual FCC e-rate reform another part of that is work that's happening at the Department of Education and so Richard I'd like you to talk a little bit about the role of the Department of Ed and how you see that fitting into some of these discussions yeah sure thanks so that is a great way to set it up what the president has called for with connect ed initiative is to make sure you know within five years that basically schools and libraries across the country are connected to broadband so high speed internet that they have access to teachers that actually don't just sort of know about technology but actually can thrive in a connected environment where there is devices that are able to be you know in the hands of these students because again you can do a whole lot of work and get internet you know wireless beaming out of all the schools and you know our devices to connect to it doesn't do you much and so we need to do that we talk about having those devices as affordable affordable devices and we talk about that as in terms of kind of equivalent to what schools are currently paying for textbooks right if if we can make that transition that's a huge step and then the last piece is having this great engaging content materials that students are able to use and whenever possible make sure those are open and free there's a huge amount of great open digital content out there it's really hard to find and it's not because so some people take well we just need more of it maybe in some areas we do but but more is it necessarily the problem I had a teacher that said to me I don't need 3,000 videos teaching about gravity I need one but it's got to be a really good one and really good is different depending on on on what the needs are and so what we're trying to do is say with connected initiative is how do we reimagine and and sort of reinvent learning when it supported by a powerful digital infrastructure and so that's that's really the the goal couple things that I would I would say one of them is that we really have to rethink some things about school we have to rethink things like seat time we have to rethink things like why do we teach every kid the same thing when there are 30 kids in the room they all have different passions needs and interests we need to rethink so so going back to this conversation we had before I would summarize a shift that we were talking about here in some of the examples of from being providing information to kids or adults and shifting that to how do we create creators right I think that's a really important question we all need to be asking how do we create creators we you're going to see an example of this on Friday hopefully you all can watch if you go to the White House Film Festival if you search for that on Google you'll get to the White House Film Festival site we were concerned that as we were talking about connect ed it was becoming very you know megabit and brought in rates and fiber and cable and it was and we were losing the point that this is about reimagining learning and so we said how do we best do this and the decision was let's let's make a call out to students across the country for them to tell us how technology can either is changing their their learning or could in the future we thought well we'll get a couple couple hundred maybe a thousand videos on a good day I think we pulled the plug when we were over 3,000 videos from students that came back they had to be made by students three minutes or less talking about how technology is or could change their life when it comes to learning they're fantastic and it's all because you know these we put these kids in a creative role so go so watch on on Friday and we'll be they'll be posted so you'll be able to see them all afterwards but that's a that's a piece that we need to be thinking about and one final thing that I'll sort of say here is I would love for us to shift a bit from not just talking about digital literacy but thinking about digital citizenship what does it mean to be a digital citizen we talked about with some great examples here about obama care being a program that's you know access happens through online we talked about jobs we talked about health what does it mean to be a digital in in in school when I used to be a teacher in school we used to talk about things like hey don't run in the halls hey don't steal stuff out of somebody else's locker right those were all conversations that we had what is the digital equivalent of that right what is running in the halls look like in a digital what is stealing from somebody's locker look like in a digital space and I'm not hearing that conversation as much as I would like to so I think we really need to think about what does it mean to create digital citizens and how do we help have that conversation and support kids being involved in in coming up with that answer that's fantastic I love that idea of digital citizenship and I think that's something that we'll talk more about internally and hopefully here I want to shift again a little bit to the FCC because that's where I know we we've we've been talking about the there's been too much focus on on connectivity or capacity or how much or how little or what or the details but I think that there can't possibly be too much focus we just have to make sure there's equal focus on the other areas and that's the point I was going to make I think we do also have to talk candidly about what needs to happen as part of these important federal reform processes to ensure that all of these wonderful things that are happening in Albemarle Albemarle Albemarle I can do it when I'm looking at the shape of it in Albemarle and to ensure that that communities across the country have access to this type of of technology technological connectivity and so my question to the panelists is what what do you see as being a priority in these proceedings what needs to happen to allow you to do the things that that you are trying to do in your communities that you represent anyone I could start with just a couple I mean I am representing a federal agency and I don't mean to talk to the FCC about what they should or shouldn't do but we know from libraries across the nation that if we could simplify the application process that would be huge we also hope and I know the FCC is committed to developing a more flexible flexible procurement process so we could have more consortiums applying and we could have longer contracts for services so we don't want to get too much in the weeds but those are pretty practical things that that we need to see happen and I also think on behalf of the rural libraries who again are some of the those rural communities maybe have no free internet access how can we create a one-time capital infrastructure program that's going to provide an incentive where maybe some of our commercial companies wouldn't necessarily go there they will go there because what you've heard I mean there is a huge divide and we want to make sure the people in our rural communities and also some of our low income urban communities have the same chance to have the wonderful access to these assets we've heard about today as everybody else I think that and it goes along with what you're saying that what we need is an incentive or to incent entrepreneurship inside our public sector and here's an example right now there are really a lot of disincentives around the current e-rate plan because there are so many controls of what you can do or can't do depending on where you fall in the layers of the system similar to Medicaid where states have a lot more flexibility in terms of here's the formula that says here's the money you're going to get now figure out how you can make best use of that I'd really love to see a very flexible focus on for example at Albemarle 726 square miles where as big as New York City but certainly with a lot less density but the reality is I have kids that are living in high poverty in rural Albemarle who are living in high poverty in urban ring Albemarle around the city of Charlottesville 70% free of reduced lunch and some of our schools plus and then I've got middle class Albemarle which has you know kids who are living in homes from you know the University of Virginia docs and lawyers and so forth who have everything that they could possibly need if they're living in a place in Albemarle that actually has access via DSL at 7 some of them aren't but the thing that I really need is the capability to say if I need to use some of that money to buy devices so that our kids going home will be able to go home with a device that will connect to our educational broadband spectrum build out that we're doing I want to be able to do that right now I can't if I want to be able to lay and we're laying right now 120 miles of fiber at our own expense to connect schools and government offices together in our urban area I want to be able to use some of e-rate to do that and then if I need to be able to do what we've just recently done which is to expand our Wi-Fi so it doesn't feel like we're sipping peanut butter through a straw then I want to be able to use the money for that and so what I really want to do is to be incented to look at the needs of a community that's varied and to make decisions based on the best way that we can serve our customers in their homes as well as in our schools and to connect to be able to leverage our resources with libraries with police departments with local government and with the commercial sector where that works for us and right now we don't have that kind of flexibility and I think that that if we can get that it could really change the game not just for us but for a lot of people across the country who don't see the way to get there there's got to be models one bite-sized piece too that I would say so this stuff that you're talking about is just fantastic it's saying how do we look at owning a fiber network how do we look at owning a while I mean you're it's just it's just phenomenal a question was brought up earlier what do you do is there a bite-sized sort of step for places that may not be quite there and two things I would just mention real quick one is the department vet is working on a connected schools guide which is going to basically say and will be available shortly which says here are a bunch of different ways that schools across the country have connected and communities have gotten connectivity options that you may not know about that's the first one but the second one is everybody should know right now about a opportunity called everyone on I think most people hopefully do I see some heads nodding but if you don't please go to everyone on org everyone on org is an opportunity for homes to you know folks to be connected at home at a greatly reduced price if they're not able to forward commercial broadband prices so I just want to throw that in in case I get you know hit by a bus on the way out of here that I have not left without you knowing that everyone on org is a great resource that you can do if you're not quite to the point and more perhaps of those programs that I I know learning to go that that rolled out not long ago I've really followed the new Rochelle one where Verizon partnered and put 4g devices in the hands of kids that we need more opportunities for that to occur because the more models that are out there the more that you'll see superintendents heads of library systems taking risks but right now it's almost as if much of the nation is almost in the dark yeah because they don't get access to even those models and I feel like you know what a lot of folks here are calling out is really the need to be able to leverage these kinds of resources out into the community and think about schools and libraries as you know beyond brick and mortar institutions as you know hubs of civic and social support in a community and I just want to remember in all of this that you know schools and libraries play that function there are other kinds of institutions other kinds of organizations that also play that role and I think your suggestion about coalitions and and you know opening up the application procedure to coalitions is really important you know look at cities all across the country where schools are being closed where libraries are have hardly any resources and you know I'll just pull on our experience with b-top a little bit to say that that program was pioneering in the way that it understood the importance of all kinds of community organizations as part of that network of social support that human infrastructure that social infrastructure so you know working together coalitions of groups can you know bring communities all together into the digital world more so than just you know specific roles and specific kinds of institutions I think that's great and that leads to another question I've been thinking about and curious about how do your various constituencies leverage the connectivity within institution walls out into the community we've talked a little bit about the wi-fi initiatives that Pam mentioned I know that Greta has some she can talk about with her work in Detroit and New York and Philadelphia but what does connectivity outside of institution walls look like and what sorts of thing how does that fit into the e-rate reform process and and what would be helpful to ensure that you have the support to do to do more robust connectivity outside of the institution walls the flexibility is the flexibility on how to spend them the resources we do have hot spots that we're starting to put in around the community in places that are underserved and what we really want to do and we have plans to do is to do a lot of libraries have already figured out which is you buy a mobile unit that's a teaching classroom that's wired that can go to anywhere where there are gaps it's like a bookmobile but it's a classroom you know it's you know they're really a houston has one memphis had memphis public library has one but that doesn't have to that doesn't have to be a library only right functionality a lot of schools already have those you know there's a lot of schools but then they sit dormant you know they sit there you know in the afternoons and weekends and the evenings so if we could develop these consortiums and and use the e-rate money to buy in this collaborative way and invest in a you know citywide wireless mobile lab that would just be one step in filling in the gaps but putting the hot spot center certainly something that we're trying to do there was really a funny article in the state paper in south carolina recently about all the people that sit in the parking lots of the library after we close using the wireless they sit in the parking lots they sit outside on benches so after hours then so that's one of and now it's become like the 24 seven calling card of the library and as we redesign the physical spaces we're going to start thinking about how we design the space for when there's no staff in the building and people want to congregate outside in a way that's safe and you know enjoyable at midnight they can great so it becomes more like the apple store yes in new york two o'clock in the morning you go in there and people are in there doing all kinds of things how do our libraries and schools start to function more like that as well right but i think about it too from the standpoint that if you go back to that that concept of connectivity that it's less about connecting spaces and more or places and more about just being sure that when you think about that no matter where people travel today they take their computing with them how is it you make sure whether it's kids or families that you serve no matter where they go in the community and they're taking their computing with them that they're able to get connected so keeping the people connected is the key i mean it it almost fights against the nature of of broadband technology to sort of confine it within a brick and mortar place right so i mean i think you know ham and i were talking before about the exciting work that she's doing in her community with tv white spaces as a way to propagate you know wi-fi signal throughout the community so that's that's really exciting and you know that's another sort of regulatory measure you know freeing up tv white spaces to do that kind of work we work in the communities we work with with mesh technology which is another very exciting kind of technology because you need really a community process and you need people in the community who are digitally literate in another way to be able to actually be part of building these networks so building the network can itself be a community building activity so you know that's a kind of device literacy and it requires people who not only know how to use um you know how to play with broadband but also people who can climb up on rooftops and organize their neighbors and all kinds of stuff so i think that the sort of endless possibilities for like the technical means by which you take you know a bandwidth and spread it out in the community um but you know it's another set of exciting learning and you know i would really i wish that that could have this conversation was worried about what his dream was for ebs because one of the things that i know based on conversations with superintendents around the united states is most of us have taken our ebs and we lease it to someone and those people just sit on it and don't do anything with it because they're waiting for a time where they can really make money with it and so the reality is we've tied up this huge educational broadband spectrum from actually being used for connectivity and so when ours came open that was a real pivot point for me as a superintendent to say you know and you said hey don't anybody who's doing this i said let's take it back and figure out how we can use it to make it do what it was supposed to do i think originally i don't know well and i think that now that presents a good time to open it up for audience questions um do we have someone at the back with a microphone okay great thanks nick um yeah so i i invite anyone um who has a question here to go ahead and put your hand in the air and we'll get to you if not i can keep going but oh we've got one hi i'm laura breed and i work at ntia on the b top program so i know some of you um this is all great and it's very exciting it's very visionary and optimistic and sometimes it's really hard to feel visionary and optimistic here in washington so thank you all for coming especially those who came from farther away um and i'm sure we have a few lawyers in the room so i'm going to ask a question about i think these are great ideas personally i mean i i'm not speaking for ntia necessarily about every single idea but what is it possible for us to do within the current regulatory regime around flexibility in the use of the e-rate funds and what would it take to get to a place where we could use the funds for devices for wireless for community based facilities or to share with the community um and reed you might know something about this yeah go ahead um we'll pass the mic hold on just for one second and we'll get you a mic chairman i apologize for speaking more than once uh so uh in the world of washington which is not reality it's just the reality as we know it here um i think that there's uh i think it's really important to um do something that's a useful guide to uh all activities uh in life and that is to try to stand in the other person's shoes so the other person in question would be the current chairman of the FCC uh so tom wheeler in um december of 1994 uh was the head of the cellular trade association and uh not in that capacity but as a friend he came to me and he said um let me come over to your house this weekend congress had just gone from republic from democratic to republican in the house and in the senate uh and i uh thought well you know what what's going to happen now because speaker gingrich had announced that the FCC should be closed as an agency so that seemed to be about to bring a fairly rapid uh halt to my um then one year old government career it also didn't seem to indicate that the e-rate had much of a chance of happening so tom said uh i don't want you to give up uh i want you to recognize that all these things take time and i want you to recognize that you have to just keep pressing forward with your ideas on both sides of the aisle and sooner or later you'll find somebody on the other side of the aisle that turned out to be olympia snow but to answer your question um i have a two-part answer uh first what is the flexibility available under under the law the flexibility is quite significant the reason that the law became in an administrative sense so ossified and so cumbersome in the way that you all experience every single day is because now you know i'm really sorry but do you want to know the truth or do you want to have it be that it's just kumbaya right here's the truth the truth is that uh after that law was passed uh it pleased the uh opponents of the next presidential nominee on the democratic side that was al gore it pleased the opponents to say that the law was the gore tax and that every person in america would see it on their bill and that they would all uh hate it because it was taking from the few and giving to whoever the heck these people are they go to libraries that was basically the attack so there's not one bit of humor intended in my remarks in 1998 uh congress uh used uh grand juries to try to drive the e-rate administrators out of their jobs they cut their salaries in 1999 they accused all the libraries and schools of wasting the money uh and they made libraries and schools uh feel the administrators feel that they were going to go to jail if they didn't develop really really uh complicated and burdensome administrative processes maybe some of you lived these years uh in 1999 gore's political advisors told me that i'd made a horrible mistake ever creating the program in the year 2000 he lost the election by when the votes when they stopped counting the votes by 500 in in florida and in from 2001 to 2009 the FCC thought the program was a bad idea not that it was a good idea that it was a bad idea and that's the reason it wasn't expanded or changed in those years that's the reality of politics olympia snow a republican when she resigned said it was one of the two things that she was most proud of doing in congress meaning i'm not saying everybody feels this way i'm saying it is impossible to have a program that takes from the many and gives to the few and to think that it's no problem expanding it you can't have a program that takes from the many and gives to the few and say oh let's just have more billions of dollars please you have to make the case so i'm trying to say two things every single idea you all have mentioned my heart swells i practically cry they're great ideas they have to be translated into data reform you have to be i don't want to go all zen on you but you have to be the change you wish to become meaning if libraries cannot count the bandwidth per user then libraries don't deserve to get any more money it's as simple as that if you can't count the bandwidth per user peak times then how could you possibly think that you you should get more money instead of the one million other needy claims that are made in washington or maybe it's two billion other needy claims made in washington number two there is nothing about schools and libraries that isn't political who doesn't know this already you'd never even know what's going to hit you next right you you think you're going to teach science and somebody says you're teaching religion and you thought it was science right it happens all the time it happens all the time that's the nature of education and that's the nature of libraries it's the melting pot of cultural debate i'm not saying i don't want to be heard to say democrats or right republicans are wrong or vice versa i'm saying you're in a political battle so you have to start with the data what is the bandwidth per user and number two you have to be able to say reform starts at home these are all matching grants every program you came up with if you said and here's the non-fcc match will you match it you have a 90 chance of having it happen if you say we don't have a match but could you just give us more money then you have a 10 chance of having it happen i'm giving you a poli sci answer now you ask about the flexibility in the program the reason for the inflexibility is that uh for 17 years various watchdogs in government have scared the heck out of administrators it's not because administrators said i really wish to be stupid and i really wish to burden your life and i really wish that everything is really difficult for you it is because they are so afraid from experience that they will be they will be ruined they will be ruined so the flexibility it starts with libraries and schools have to be hugely transparent about their contracts because if you're transparent then you're protecting the administrators so here's a lesson in about education and about libraries anything really great is never learned by anybody else and is never repeated right it never scales i learned this i taught seventh grade at the worst school in philadelphia and i was given nothing and i learned very little and nothing was passed on and i went back there 17 years later to announce the e-rate with the mayor of philadelphia and he said we ought to announce this in the worst school in philadelphia turned out it was the exact same school that i had taught at 20 years earlier nothing good about this story not one thing good about this story so what am i saying first you have to come up with the matching grants and if the matching grants are for anything that you want you will find that the program will be flexible because the fact that you have the match is protection number two all the contracts need to be transparent there should be no contracts that are not on the internet it shouldn't be possible for people to say i don't know what you're paying what am i paying how many contracts are on the internet how many times did libraries and schools sign agreements with providers that say this is confidential why do you why does anyone sign that agreement that's that's the second step the third step don't ask for flexibility have the contracts say these are all the things we want to do we will have the match pay for anything you don't allow and we you can pay for everything that you will allow and then you'll find that it's completely flexible this is all reality i'm sorry if i've hit the you know the note that's out of tune on the piano but i'm saying to you all uh if i'm tom wheeler and if i'm going to tom wheeler the way he went to me in 1994 and if i'm gonna say to him and if you all are gonna say to him you know we really want to help you you have to really help him you have to not just pat him on the back you have to say this is all we're going to do for you and then all the flexibility will be found all those administrative processes and the regulations they were all put in there over the year to protect people from public criticism they're not they don't come from the statute sorry folks can i just throw in i just want to throw in two really practical possible answers to that as well so one of them is um there is you know e-rate modernization that's happening and even light speed speed which at which that is happening is still slower than answering your immediate question so chairman wheeler has said there will be two billion dollars that'll be made one this year one next year and has given lots of indication that that will be much more flexible in in the way or at least more flexible in the way it's used in the meantime while e-rate is being modernized so that's the first thing is look for how a billion dollars this year and next year can be used in some more flexible ways the second piece is just about a week ago i put out a dear colleague letter from the department of ed saying how federal u.s department of ed funds can be used they're 14 billion dollars in title one two billion dollars in title two now let's be clear that money is going to very important things now so so i want to i want to be really clear about it's not like it's just sitting there not being used but those are funds that if used correctly and used in coordination with other programs in schools could be used to help deal with some of those issues so those are two things right off the bat of areas where there's some additional flexibility even while the e-rate modernization is happening and by the way i think end of this month ish we're supposed to see what those flexibilities will be as as the FCC puts out some more detailed guidance i'd also like to respond really quickly just on the point of data so i think it's great that you're bringing this up and i think that you know it's important to note with data that that itself is also a political question how do we define metrics you know what are the important metrics to to use when measuring the success of any kind of program right so the the process of actually defining the metrics becomes very political so you know for instance um what what were the metrics this is something we did a lot of work on what were the metrics to define success for the v-top program were they percentage of subscribers by household per census tract or something like that i mean and you get into really really wonky discussions here but it really matters and so i think like we all have a lot of work to do to make sure that the metrics are meaningful and also that there are standards for data so that means that not only do we need to have meaningful metrics for e-rate but we also have to have open data and meaningful open data for connect to compete for internet essentials for all kinds of digital literacy and and other kinds of you know connectivity efforts that are happening so we are we look forward to engaging with all of you to to establish open data metrics standards going forward i think it's going to take all of us and it's going to take people working in the real world to talk about what those metrics should be they're not going to come from uh you know politicians and they're different for they they might need some flexibility to be different for public libraries than they are for schools which is one of the biggest challenges that we've had in applying um you know in the edge program that u l c and gates and all other folks are working on right now which is you know establishing what that capacity is for libraries and for communities i think is a nice tie-in to what we're talking about here but i'm going to go way up here for a second and probably get myself into trouble although i think rachel backed me up on this um is that we have done a lot of soul searching with imls's lead in really talking about to what end are we providing the access to what end are we increasing the capacity um i have three children tour in public schools and i know what they use that technology for they don't go to your school i wish they did you know i mean they don't so i a great place to live i don't know about that um but but i um i like my job uh but but that to what end that outcome conversation is one that i know that fcc probably doesn't care about but it doesn't it's not enough just to say we need this much more bandwidth per person per community what are they doing with it what are the outcomes and that's where you need real flexibility and real vision because the outcomes for my community might be different than the outcomes for your community or slightly well adjusted and i'll tell you that one of the things i talk about all the time if all you're doing is taking your technology and turning it into screen sheets versus worksheets yes or print pdm just turn our testing with it instead of anything you are just investing a lot more money to do the same thing you've almost done so what is it and and i like to think about that um you talked about creation i think our kids are going to be incredible curators and creators in the future as a result of the work we're doing today but i also think about how do we really think of the work we're doing with technologies as being about expanding cognition creation and connection collaboration because those are the three ways that you're actually changing the paradigm of what education looks like if it's just the same thing we did in the 20th century except now it's on what we educators call high tech while the rest of the world just calls it tech then i think that that you haven't changed anything and it's maybe not a good use so i see one more question from the audience we'll do one quick one and then i think we'll we'll wrap up after that uh mary alice was i saw your hand sorry thanks mary alice ball from imls i was going to put in a plug uh richard had mentioned everyone on we fund a wonderful project through the public library association a division of the american library association called digital learn dot org and i would encourage you to go there it's they've got wonderful digital literacy materials and content and by the end of the year that content will be available not just in english but also in spanish and in chinese and i have a question for the panel and maybe for commissioner hunt if he'd indulge when we look at that that third of our nation that's unserved the the most rural libraries tribal libraries can you talk about match and can we require that of libraries that are struggling to pay their electric bill you know how do we get applicants to buy in at the same time as we understand the circumstances under which they operate thank you mary alice for for sending me that question i you know i i totally hear uh what you're saying i think in some way though i think that the match and we might have a sliding scale on the match but i do believe that some level of match for support through this program or other programs is critical because it shows that the community has somehow bought into that so i i would really recommend a look at a sliding scale and i know i'm ls does a huge amount of work and support in our tribal communities in our tribal libraries who are probably the most disadvantaged of all and we're trying to make sure they at least have the opportunity to apply fairly which has been a challenge in the current e-rate structure so i think that match uh even if it's a little tiny bit shows that there's some commitment on the local level and an understanding have how important it is so that's my answer anybody else might have one yeah so one thing i think that's important to note here well two things first of all this issue isn't just a rural issue at all there are many many urban communities where resources are extremely limited just as limited as the rural communities and where adoption is just as low so we have to think about everybody right and then the other point that i'll make is that in our experience you know one thing about coalitions of different kinds of community organizations is that you know we we found in our work that community organizations may be dedicated to public health or they may be dedicated to you know supporting single parents or you know any number of they may have any number of individual missions but they all understand the importance of digital access as becoming more and more central to accomplishing those missions so you know i think the more that you can look to different kinds of sectors i mean sort of everybody sees digital literacy as having an increasing role so i think that part of it is looking for diversification in a match and not just having the match be about you know digital literacy per se it's these other things we're trying to get to in terms of social support and social infrastructure what happens when the match is the public library it's like because the the more people realize that that is a huge component of civic engagement or the more they just say go to the library and do that you know and so we we see you know we do most of the unemployment in south carolina is filed in you know online and and so we're seeing people reducing their investment because we're supposed to be there right bolstering which we're we're happy to do you know we feel like that's a huge piece of our mission but libraries have been sort of thrust into this role and so yes i'm not trying to make it sound well you know like it's a bad thing but it's an interesting piece because i had a parent share with me i don't know a year or so ago she said i'm driving home from school with my two kids and uh we're listening to the radio and something comes up about syria and my young child my first grader says mom what's syria i say why don't we go to the library my older child has my iphone and is passing it over to the younger child and that's what libraries are competing with in families that have that kind of connectivity so how do libraries like schools really figure out what is it that we're going to offer in the future that keeps a level of viability about us that as we get people more connected are able to get access to resources that are not in libraries i just have to jump in i just have to jump in because i see the role of the library and and the school but the role of the library really as a networking entity so we have we're a platform we have great community knowledge and we can make sure that those those mission specific organizations that we're utilizing their interest and capacity and connecting them with the rest of the community so we are that place that can bring all those resources together um i think that's really important role for us to play and richard you were mentioning how all the teachers i have a daughter who's a teacher in the new york public schools and it's like oh i get too many of these curriculum things i don't know what to pick so our teachers and our librarians that is our role curating content no matter how much we use google we still get a lot of content on there and we need one of our key roles that we've always played is curating content and that's that one of the assets that we can bring to this equation we're not in competition with google we lost that warlock yeah that's not what we do you know i would look that up on on google as well who wouldn't do that that has access to that but that's not the business for it that's right and i think that it really speaks to where you started with ecosystems my background was in in uh ecology and one of the things i think about is that schools and libraries have got to move higher up the food chain oh yeah in order to really main viable because whether it's kids who are able to walk with their feet out of bricks and mortar schools or walk out of libraries and into different spaces to get the information they need that both of those systems are going to have to change if they're going to remain viable in terms of what they offer to the public in general and i think that this whole conversation is as much about that as it is anything else that we're talking about today i think that's a great place to stop and i want to thank all of you all of my panelists for this really engaging and interesting conversation and for the audience for coming to be here and listening with us or for tuning in online and thank you all all right