Laptops with wi-fi keep students in rural districts connected outside school hours

The poverty rate for students at Coachella Valley Unified School District in Southern California is more than 95 percent, meaning that many of their families are unable to afford internet service at home and they have to rely on service from the schools.

When Supt. Darryl Adams found that students couldn’t afford the internet, he brought it to them, with wi-fi routers on school buses. And he used the devices to serve the community, not just the students. “Eight Wi-Fi buses are now left overnight in various neighborhoods, and the school district is now turning salvaged cars into even more mobile hot spots,” Carter Evans reports for CBS News.

Adams told Evans, “I would be here sometimes on Friday night and drive by school and there would be parents with kids in the car sitting there doing their homework. … I have made the joke that I will put a router on a pigeon if I have to, and fly them around the neighborhood. Whatever it takes to get these kids connected, I will do. It is essential to education.”

Coachella, the first school district in the country to put iPads in the hands of every student from kindergarten through 12th grade, has already seen the benefits of increased internet access, with its graduation rate up 8 percent.

Written by Tim Mandell