Thousands of high-school students in the El Paso Independent School District now will have access to high-speed internet and 24/7 learning tools thanks to a grant from Sprint’s 1Million Project Foundation.
“Sprint’s 1Million Project Foundation is helping to close the connectivity gap that currently exists among low-income students throughout the United States,” said EPISD Superintendent Juan Cabrera.
“Access to information is the key to success in education, and we know that many of our students lose that access once they go home for the day. This grant will help us address this very critical issue in education,” Cabrera added.
The 4-year, multi-million dollar grant will provide WiFi hotspots for 1,350 low-income students who do not currently have internet services at home.
The hotspots will give them 3 gigabytes of data services per month to use at home and share with their families.
The 1Million Project aims to provide WiFi enabled hotspots to 1 million students in the United States who currently do not have high-speed internet access at home. The foundation estimates that 70 percent of high-school teachers assign online homework, but that more than 5 million families with school-aged children don’t have internet connectivity.
EPISD students who will benefit from the 1Million Project grant will receive the hotspot from their high-school library. The device will be theirs to take home and use throughout the school year.
The Foundation also is providing free SAT prep courses to students with the devices and gives them additional gigabytes to use if the college-entrance classes are completed.
The Foundation was created by Spring Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure in 2016 after he read an article outlining what technology educators called the Homework Gap — the lack of internet access in low-income communities and the effects it has had on student performance.
