EPISD gives thousands of free hotspots to students

The El Paso Independent School District gave out free WiFi hotspots to students at The Silva Health Magnet auditorium Wednesday Morning.

The district will hand out about 1,350 hotspots to students during the week. The Silva Health Magnet was the first stop on Wednesday.

The hotspots were provided by a grant from Sprint’s 1Million Project Foundation. It’s a 4-year, multi-million dollar grant that provided low-income students access to 3 gigabytes of data services per month to use at home and share with their families.

Tim Holt, the director of Technology Pilots and Innovation at EPISD, said internet is, “ubiquitous now with our curriculum. Students get assignments where teachers are asking them to do things that require internet access, and what we want these students to be able to do is go home to get their internet instead of having to go to a McDonalds or a Starbucks.”

Xavier Huilar is a junior at Jefferson High who received a hotspot, he said, “People like us don’t have a lot of opportunities for things like this. I think it’s really great and amazing that Sprint is actually doing this.”

“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.”

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.

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. 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.