FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — The Fulton County school district is doing what it can do make sure that all of its 90,000+ student stay connected to the Internet during the first day of online learning today.
The district gave devices and hot spots to students who need them, increased Internet speeds at the schools where teachers be and they’ve reached out to service providers.
A mother of three told Channel 2 Action News her family will all be online at 8 a.m. Monday.
“We were devising a plan on how to work on the Internet at our personal home because we have five people working from home essentially,” said mother Diana Cole.
[COUNTY-BY-COUNTY: Plans for returning to school this fall]
It’s a concern for Fulton County Superintendent Mike Looney. In a letter to Internet service providers requesting help, he says they’ve nearly doubled bandwidth inside the schools for the teachers.
“While the district has taken these steps, we remain concerned about points of failure outside of our control, and that includes internet infrastructure and bandwidth capability of public and private networks in our community,” the letter included.
Related Stories:
- Teachers, parents protest outside Fulton Co. Schools headquarters over back-to-school plans
- Fulton County Schools report 150 positive COVID-19 tests among staff, students since July
- Fulton County delays start of Fall sports to Sept. 14
“I have four people. One hard-wired computer and the other three of us are WiFi,” said parent Ruth Hartman.
Hartman says she’s glad the district is engaging the service providers but she wonders if it it’s too late and shouldn’t have waited till just days before school starts.
“Should have been a conversation maybe in May or June, ‘Hey what are doing to do? There’s 90,000 kids and their parents are going to be on the Internet between 8 and 4. What are we going to do?’” Hartman said.
Channel 2 Action News reached out to both AT&T and Comcast, and they said they’re willing to help and they say they’re willing to help and have been working with Fulton and other districts around the state to keep kids connected.
This browser does not support the video element.