A Los Angeles Unified School District spokesperson confirmed they’re investigating a listing on a notorious dark web marketplace, posted Thursday by a user named “The Satanic Cloud,” which seeks $1,000 in exchange for what they claim is a trove of more than 24 million records. The development comes nearly two years after the district fell victim to a ransomware attack that led to a widespread leak of sensitive student records, some dating back years. 

Simultaneously, federal officials were citing that earlier ransomware attack in L.A. and subsequent breaches, with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel noting that they’ve become a growing scourge for districts of all sizes.

“School districts as large as Los Angeles Unified in California and as small as St. Landry Parish in Louisiana were the target of cyberattacks,” Rosenworcel said, adding that these events lead to real-world learning disruptions and sometimes millions in district recovery costs. “This situation is complex, but the vulnerabilities in the networks that we use in our nation’s schools and libraries are real and growing.”

“So today, we’re going to do something about it,” she said.

The five-person FCC voted 3-2 to approve the pilot, which will provide firewalls and other cybersecurity services to eligible school districts and libraries over a three-year period. While the pilot aims to study how federal funds can be deployed to bolster the defenses of these vulnerable targets, some have criticized the initiative for being too little, too late. When Rosenworcel first outlined the proposal in July, education stakeholders demanded a more urgent and substantive federal response.

Districts selected to participate in the newly approved pilot will receive a minimum of $15,000 for approved services and the commission aims to “provide funding to as many schools and school districts as possible,” it . While the funding “will not, by itself, be sufficient to fund all of the school’s cybersecurity needs,” the fact sheet notes, the commission seeks to ensure that “each participating school will receive funding to prioritize implementation of solutions within one major technological category.”

The Satanic Cloud, which posted the most recent batch of LAUSD data, told ����Ӱ�� it’s entirely separate from what was stolen in the September 2022 ransomware attack on the nation’s second-largest school district. An executive at a leading threat intelligence company said his team suspects the data did originate from the earlier event.

The Los Angeles district is aware of the threat actor’s claims, a spokesperson told ����Ӱ�� in an email Thursday, and “is investigating the claim and engaging with law enforcement to investigate and respond to the incident.”

‘It’s definitely sensitive data’

In an investigation last year, ����Ӱ�� found that thousands of L.A. students’ psychological evaluations had been leaked online after cybercriminals levied a ransomware attack on the system. The district had categorically denied that the mental health records had been compromised, but within hours of the story, acknowledged that they had. 

Just last month, a joint investigation by ����Ӱ�� and The Acadiana Advocate revealed that officials at the 12,000-student St. Landry Parish School Board, located some 63 miles west of Baton Rouge, waited five months after a ransomware attack to inform data breach victims that their sensitive information had been compromised. The notice came after an earlier investigation by the news outlets uncovered that personally identifiable student, employee and business records had been exposed, despite the district’s assertion otherwise, and that St. Landry had likely violated the state’s breath notification law. Within hours of the first story publishing, the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office issued a notification warning to the district. 

The latest Los Angeles files were listed Thursday on the dark web marketplace BreachForums, briefly last month after it came under the control of federal law enforcement officials. The Federal Bureau of Investigation first targeted BreachForums in March 2023 when it, 20-year-old Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, at his home in Peekskill, New York. At the time, BreachForums was among the largest hacker forums and claimed more than 340,000 users. 

A sample file included in the L. A. listing is a spreadsheet with the names, student identification numbers and other demographic information of more than 1,000 students and their parents. Data disclose students who receive special education services, their addresses and their home telephone numbers. A list of file names suggest the records include similar information about teachers. 

Reached for comment through the encrypted messaging app Telegram, the BreachForums user who listed the Los Angeles data told ����Ӱ�� “there is no connections” to the previous ransomware attack. The breach, the threat actor said, originated via the Amazon Relational Database Service, which allows businesses to create cloud-based databases. The service has been the that led to the public disclosure of troves of sensitive information. 

Kaustubh Medhe, the vice president of research and threat intelligence at the threat intelligence company Cyble, said the latest threat actor has a history of engaging in discussions about cryptocurrency scams on Telegram but this is the first time they’ve sought to sell stolen data. Cyble’s research team, he told ����Ӱ��, sees “a high likelihood” that the data was sourced from files exposed in the earlier ransomware attack. 

“Historically, we have seen this kind of activity where old data leaks are recirculated on dark web forums by different actors,” Medhe said. Either way, Medhe said it’s incumbent on district officials to take urgent action. The files, he said, could be useful for “some kind of profiling or some kind of targeted phishing activity.

“It’s definitely sensitive data, for sure,” he said, adding that district officials should analyze the sample data set available online and confirm if the records align with their internal databases and, perhaps, those stolen in 2022. “They would need to do a thorough incident response and investigation to rule out the possibility of a new breach.” 

‘An important step forward’

During Thursday’s FCC meeting, Commissioner Anna Gomez said the pilot program was an issue of educational equity. She cited a federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency , which noted that as ransomware attacks and data breaches at K-12 districts have surged in the last decade, districts with limited cybersecurity capabilities and vast resource constraints have been left most vulnerable. Connectivity, she said, is “essential for education in the 21st century.”

“Technology and high-speed internet access opens doors and unbounded opportunity for those who have it,” Gomez said. “Unfortunately, our increasingly digital world also creates opportunities for malicious actors.” 

Faced with a growing number of cyberattacks, educators have for years s with money from the federal E-rate program, which offers funding to most public schools and libraries nationwide to make broadband services more affordable. It’s a move that more than 1,100 school districts endorsed in a joint 2022 letter — but one the commission declined to adopt. In a press release, the commission said the pilot was kept separate “to ensure gains in enhanced cybersecurity do not undermine E-rate’s success in connecting schools and libraries and promoting digital equity.” The pilot will be allocated through the Universal Service Fund, which was created to subsidize telephone services for low-income households. 

In , the American Library Association, Common Sense Media, the Consortium for School Networking and other groups said the selection process for eligible schools and libraries was unclear and could confuse applicants. On Thursday, the library association nonetheless expressed its support. 

“The FCC’s decision today to create a cybersecurity pilot is an important step forward for our nation’s libraries and library workers, too many of whom face escalating costs to secure their institution’s systems and data,” President Emily Drabinski said in a statement. “We remain steadfast in our call for a long-term funding mechanism that will ensure libraries can continue to offer the access and information their communities rely on.”

Among the pilot program’s critics is school cybersecurity expert Doug Levin, who told ����Ӱ�� that many school districts lack sufficient cybersecurity expertise and, as a result, the advanced tools that the pilot seeks to provide may not be “a good fit for school systems with scarce capacity.”

“There’s no argument that schools need support,” said Levin, the co-founder and national director of the K12 Security Information eXchange. But the FCC’s “techno-solutions point of view to the problem,” he said, is far too small to make a meaningful impact and could instead prompt a vendor marketing surge that “may end up convincing some [schools] to buy solutions that, frankly, they don’t need.” 

A three-year pilot program announced by Rosenworcel earlier this month could invest up to $200 million to enhance cybersecurity in schools and libraries, yet the full proposal hasn’t been released publicly and education experts said far more would be needed to make a meaningful difference. And it could be months — if not more than a year — before the help makes its way to schools as education groups demand a more urgent federal response. 

As districts become “a prime target for cyberattacks,” the proposed pilot “will give us valuable insight about whether and how the FCC can leverage its resources to help address the cybersecurity threats that schools and libraries face,” Rosenworcel said in a July 12 speech before AASA, The School Superintendents Association and the Association of School Business Officers International. 

Education groups and school leaders have been calling for several years on the federal government to help schools bolster their cyber defenses and the pilot deviates from what many had suggested. The allowing districts to spend federal E-Rate funding on cybersecurity, a move that more than 1,100 school districts endorsed in a joint letter last year. 

Yet officials at the national superintendents’ association worried that using E-Rate funds was a diversion from the program’s mission of helping schools and libraries connect to the internet, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, the group’s associate executive director of advocacy and governance. She said the group supports the pilot because it remains separate from E-rate while still giving districts more money to protect their data. 

“All signs point towards we’re going to need a federal response so hopefully we can get some congressional acknowledgement of that during the same three-year timespan to start thinking about what something more sustainable might look like,” Ellerson Ng said. “That way when this three-year pilot is up and we can get some of the evaluated data, we can move forward.”

A found that K-12 education was the most popular target for ransomware gangs last year, with 8 in 10 districts reporting getting hit with attacks — a marked 43% increase from 2021. The average recovery cost for victim districts, which agreed to pay ransoms in nearly half of incidents, exceeded $1.5 million, excluding financial demands from cyber gangs. 

Recent high-profile ransomware incidents include an attack last year on the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country’s second-largest school system, that resulted in the public release of students’ highly sensitive psychological records. An attack on Minneapolis Public Schools this spring led to the public release of a trove of sensitive district documents, including files that outline campus rape cases, child abuse inquiries, student mental health crises and suspension reports. 

Last month, New York City Public Schools, the country’s largest district, in a massive cyber attack on the file-sharing software MOVEit. The MOVEit attack has resulted in and organizations, including universities in at least a dozen states. The National School Clearinghouse has acknowledged it was caught up in the breach, a development that school cybersecurity experts said could affect many — if not most — students nationally. 

“Cybersecurity is definitely something that has just stormed into the forefront” as districts nationwide grow increasingly alarmed by attacks, Rosenworcel said. The federal government hasn’t previously provided money to schools for cybersecurity but the pilot program, she said, offers a first step. 

The five-member FCC commission must vote on the proposal before its full details are made public, the agency said, and it must go through a formal public comment and rulemaking process. Education experts predict it could be a year or more before the money is available to districts. 

“I’ve told our superintendents that it’s realistic that it could take 10 months — best case scenario — before they’re able to apply,” Ellerson Ng said. 

School cybersecurity expert Doug Levin said the communications commission “has been slow-pedaling” on the issue for years and that the $200 million proposal is just “a drop in the bucket” of what districts nationwide would need to counter this online enemy. The pilot could be used to generate lessons learned and to set the stage for more robust federal investments, he said, but only a small number of districts are likely to receive grants under it. 

But the threat that districts face from cyber attacks is so great, Levin said, that even a much more significant investment in digital safeguards is unlikely to thwart the problem.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that, even if they were wildly successful and every school district was able to put in place a next-generation firewall, that that’s going to make a meaningful difference in the number of successful attacks against school districts,” he said. “You know, maybe they shouldn’t be collecting all this data that’s so sensitive in the first place.”

Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to clarify how schools should monitor students’ online activities, that educators’ widespread use of digital surveillance tools could trample students’ civil rights.

They also want the U.S. Education Department to start collecting data on the tools that could highlight whether they have disproportionate — and potentially harmful — effects on certain student groups. 

In October, the senators asked four education technology companies that keep tabs on the online activity of millions of students across the country — often 24 hours a day, seven days a week — to provide information on how they use artificial intelligence to glean their information. 

Based on their responses, the senators said:

• The companies’ software may be misused to identify students who are violating school disciplinary rules. They cited a recent survey where 43% of teachers reported their schools employ the monitoring systems for this purpose, potentially increasing contact between police and students and worsening the school-to-prison pipeline.

• The companies have not attempted to determine whether their products disproportionately target students of color, who already face harsher and more frequent school discipline, or other vulnerable groups, like LGBTQ youth.

• Schools, parents and communities are not being appropriately informed of the use — and potential misuse — of the data. Three of the four companies indicated they do not directly alert students and guardians of their surveillance.

Warren and Markey concluded a dire “need for federal action to protect students’ civil rights, safety and privacy.”

“While the intent of these products, many of which monitor students’ online activity around the clock, may be to protect student safety, they raise significant privacy and equity concerns,” the lawmakers wrote. “Studies have highlighted unintended but harmful consequences of student activity monitoring software that fall disproportionately on vulnerable populations.”

An FCC spokesperson said they’re reviewing the and an Education Department spokesperson said they “look forward to corresponding with the senators” about its findings.

Lawmakers’ inquiry into the business practices of school security companies Gaggle, GoGuardian, Securly and Bark Technologies is the first congressional investigation into student surveillance tools, whose use grew dramatically during the pandemic when  learning shifted online.

It follows on the heels of investigative reporting by ����Ӱ�� into Gaggle, which uses artificial intelligence and a team of human content moderators to track the online behaviors of more than 5 million students. ����Ӱ�� used public records to expose how Gaggle’s algorithm and its hourly-wage workers sift through billions of student communications each year in search of references to violence and self harm, subjecting youth to constant digital surveillance with steep implications for their privacy. Gaggle, whose tools track students on their school-issued Google and Microsoft accounts, reported a during the pandemic.

Bark didn’t respond to requests for comment. Securly spokesman Josh Mukai said in a statement that the company is reviewing the senators’ March 30 report and looks forward “to continuing our dialogue with Senators Warren and Markey on the important topics they have raised.”

“Parents expect that schools will keep children safe while in the classroom, on a field trip or while riding on a bus,” GoGuardian spokesman Jeff Gordon said in a statement. “Schools also have a responsibility to keep students safe in digital spaces and on school-issued devices.” 

Gaggle Founder and CEO Jeff Patterson submitted a statement after this article was published. He said the company is reviewing the lawmakers’ recommendations “to assess how we can further strengthen our work to better protect students.”

“We want to ensure our technology is effectively supporting student safety without creating unintended risks or harms,” Patterson continued. “We have taken steps over the years to ensure effective privacy protections and mitigate bias in our platform, but welcome continued dialogue that will help make sure tools like Gaggle can continue to be used to support students and educators.”

Bark Technologies CEO Brian Bason wrote in a letter to  lawmakers that AI-driven technology could be used to solve the country’s “terrible history of bias in school discipline” by removing the decisions of individual teachers and administrators.

“While any system, including AI-based solutions, inherently have some bias, if implemented correctly AI-based solutions can substantially reduce the bias that students face,” Bason wrote.

As to the question of whether their surveillance exacerbates the school-to-prison pipeline,  the companies’ letters acknowledge in certain cases they contact police to conduct welfare checks on students. Securly noted in its letter that in some instances, education leaders “prefer that we contact public safety agencies directly in lieu of a district contact.”

Under the Clinton-era , passed in 2000, public schools and libraries are required to filter and monitor students’ internet use to ensure they don’t access material “harmful to minors,” such as pornography. Districts have cited the law to justify the adoption of AI-driven surveillance tools that have proliferated in recent years. Student privacy advocates argue the tools go far beyond the federal mandate and have called on the FCC to clarify the law’s scope. Meanwhile, advocates have questioned whether schools’ use of digital surveillance tools to monitor students at home violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

In a recent survey by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, 81 percent of teachers said they used software to track students’ computer activity, including to block obscene material or monitor their screens in real time. A majority of parents said they worried about student data getting shared with the police and more than half of students said they decline to share their “true thoughts or ideas because I know what I do online is being monitored.”  

Elizabeth Laird, the group’s director of equity in civic technology, said it has been calling on student surveillance companies to be more transparent about their business practices but it’s “disappointing that it took a letter from Congress to get this information.” She said she hopes the FCC and Education Department adopt lawmakers’ recommendations.

“None of these companies have researched whether their products are biased against certain groups of students,” she said in an email while questioning their justification for holding off on such an inquiry. “They cite privacy as the reason for not doing so while simultaneously monitoring students’ messages, documents and sites visited 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” 

����Ӱ��’s investigation, which used data on Gaggle’s foothold in Minneapolis Public Schools, failed to identify whether the tool’s algorithm disproportionately targeted Black students, who are more often subjected to student discipline than their white classmates. However, it highlighted instances in which keywords like “gay” and “lesbian” were flagged, potentially subjecting LGBTQ youth to heightened surveillance for discussing their sexual orientation. 

Amelia Vance, an attorney and student privacy expert, said she was intrigued that the companies pushed back on the idea that their tools are used to discipline students since the federal monitoring requirement was meant to keep kids from consuming inappropriate content online and likely face consequences for viewing violent or sexually explicit materials. She agreed the companies should research their algorithms for potential biases and would benefit from additional transparency. 

However, Vance said in an email that FCC clarification “would do little at best and may provide counterproductive guidance at worst.” Many schools, she said, are likely to use the tools regardless of the federal rules. 

“Schools aren’t required to monitor social media, and many have chosen to do so anyway,” said Vance, the co-founder and president of Public Interest Privacy Consulting. Some school safety advocates are actively lobbying lawmakers to expand student monitoring requirements, she said. 

Asking the FCC to issue guidance “could actually be counterproductive to the goal of limiting monitoring and ensuring more privacy protections for students since it is possible that the FCC could require a higher level of monitoring.”

Read the letters from Gaggle, GoGuardian, Securly and Bark Technologies: 

Similarly, half of students said they are comfortable with schools’ use of monitoring software while a quarter reported feeling queasy about the idea, according to the new research by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C. Despite their overall comfort with digital software, teachers, parents and students each worried about how the tools could have detrimental side effects. Specifically, many parents and teachers were concerned that digital surveillance could be used to discipline students and young people reported becoming more reserved when they knew they were being watched.

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“In response to the pandemic, the focus on technology and its use has never been greater,” said report co-author Elizabeth Laird, the center’s director of equity in civic technology. As tech gains a greater grasp on education, she said it’s important for school leaders and policymakers to remain focused on protecting students’ individual rights. She worried that student surveillance technology could have a damaging impact on students, especially youth of color and those from low-income households.

“I don’t think it’s a slam dunk,” Laird said.

Though the report didn’t highlight specific tools used, schools deploy a range of digital monitoring software to track student activity, including programs that block online material deemed inappropriate, track when students log into school applications, and allow teachers to view students’ screens in real-time and even take control of their computers.

Last week, an investigative report by ����Ӱ�� exposed how the Minneapolis school district’s use of the digital surveillance tool Gaggle had subjected children to relentless online surveillance long after classes ended for the day — including inside students’ homes. Through artificial intelligence and a team of content moderators, Gaggle tracks the online behaviors of millions of students across the U.S. every day by sifting through data stored on their school-issued Google and Microsoft accounts. In Minneapolis, the company flagged school security when moderators believed students could harm themselves or others, but it also picked up students’ classroom assignments, journal entries, chats with friends and fictional stories.

Among teachers surveyed by the Center for Democracy and Technology, 81 percent said their schools use software that tracks students’ computer activity, including to block obscene material, monitor students’ screens in real time and prohibit students from using websites unrelated to school like YouTube. A majority of both parents and students reported such tools were used in their schools, but they were also more likely than teachers to be unsure about whether youth were being actively monitored by educators. In interviews with administrators, researchers found that many school leaders weren’t sure how best to be transparent with families about their monitoring practices.

“Certainly there is an imbalance in information and transparency around what is happening,” Laird said. School districts have been clear [that] students shouldn’t have an expectation of privacy but they haven’t been as clear about what they are tracking, how they are tracking it, how long they keep that information. They really should be doing that.”

Among teachers, 66 percent said the benefits of activity monitoring outweigh student privacy concerns and 62 percent of parents reached a similar conclusion. Meanwhile, 78 percent of teachers reported that digital surveillance helps keep students safe by identifying problematic online behaviors and 72 percent said it helps keep students on task. But their answers also revealed equity concerns: 71 percent of teachers reported that monitoring software is applied to all students equally, 51 percent worried that it could come with unintended consequences like “outing” LGBTQ students and 49 percent said it violates students’ privacy.

Many teachers reported that such monitoring tools are used on students long after classes end for the day. In total, 30 percent of educators said the tools are active “all of the time,” and 16 percent said the software tracks kids on their personal devices.

Among parents, 75 percent said digital surveillance helps keep students safe and 73 percent said it ensures children remain focused on schoolwork. Yet many parents also reported potential downsides: 61 percent worried of long-term harm if the tools were used to discipline students, 51 percent were concerned about unintended consequences and 49 percent said it violates students’ privacy rights.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, students were less at ease with educators watching their online behaviors. Half said they were comfortable with monitoring tools, a quarter said they were uncomfortable with them and another quarter were unsure.

The data also suggest that students alter their behaviors as a result of being watched: 58 percent said they don’t share their true thoughts or ideas online as a result of being monitored at school and 80 percent said they were more careful about what they search online. While just 39 percent of students said it was unfair that educators monitored their school-issued services, 74 percent opposed the surveillance of their own devices like their cell phones. are among those that could track students’ behaviors on their own technology.

The data raise significant equity concerns. For many students, school-issued devices are their only method of connectivity.

“The privacy and security of personal devices is a luxury not all can afford,” Alexandra Givens, the center’s president and CEO, said in a press release. “Constant online monitoring — especially of students who cannot afford or don’t have access to personal devices — risks creating disparities in the ways student privacy is protected nationwide.”

To reach its findings, researchers conducted online surveys in June that were completed by 1,001 teachers, 1,663 parents and 420 high school students. Researchers also conducted interviews with school administrators to understand their motives in deploying digital surveillance. Among the justifications is a federal law that requires schools to monitor students online. But the law also includes a disclaimer noting that the statute does not “require the tracking of internet use by any identifiable minor or adult user.”

Understanding context is critical, Laird said, adding that the law’s authors hadn’t fully envisioned a world where students could be surveilled by artificial intelligence long after classes end for the day.

“What was happening at the time was students were in a school computer lab for part of the day and monitoring meant having an adult walking around a computer lab and physically looking at what was on students’ computer monitors,” she said. But today, she said the statute is being interpreted very differently.

In response, the center, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Learner Equity Tuesday to clarify the law’s stipulations and inform educators it “does not require broad, invasive and constant surveillance of students’ lives online.”

“Systemic monitoring of online activity can reveal sensitive information about students’ personal lives, such as their sexual orientation, or cause a chilling effect on their free expression, political organizing, or discussion of sensitive issues such as mental health,” the letter continued. “These harms likely fall disproportionately on already vulnerable, over-policed and over-disciplined communities.”

But the narrow, 45-day window for districts to apply comes in the middle of the summer as leaders are scrambling to prepare for a new school year and face a host of unknowns.

“I think a lot of schools are going to say, ‘We can’t do it,’” said Evan Marwell, CEO of nonprofit Education SuperHighway, a nonprofit working to improve at-home broadband service for students.

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If they don’t apply for the new , part of the American Rescue Plan, districts could miss out on critical funding at a time when demand for remote learning options this fall is increasing. While most say they’re committed to fully reopening, concerns about rising COVID-19 cases are prompting more parents to push for virtual learning. The question is whether students — especially those in lower-income homes — will still have to contend with glitchy Zoom sessions or getting kicked off line in the middle of submitting assignments.

Home internet access has increased substantially in recent years, but 11 percent of families still depend on mobile devices for service, according to released last month from New America and Rutgers University. Among those with at-home broadband service, more than half described their service as too slow.

A by the Consortium for School Networking, a professional group for district technology leaders, showed that almost three-quarters of respondents said they plan to apply for the new federal funds. But only 170 members took the survey. A spokeswoman for the Federal Communications Commission, which runs the program, said the agency doesn’t have data on how many districts have applied so far. Christine Fox, senior director of external relations at the Consortium, added that some districts are waiting for a second application window, but the FCC said there’s no guarantee there will be one.

‘COVID numbers increasing’

Arkansas is among the states where some districts are applying for the technology fund and seeing a growing demand for remote learning. Applications from districts that want to offer virtual academies have been pouring into the education department. In mid-June, Don Benton, assistant commissioner for research and technology, had received 125 requests. By last week, most of those had been approved, with at least another 75 pending.

Benton expected as much, with “COVID numbers increasing … due the abysmal number of people getting vaccinated and taking the vaccination, social distancing, and precautions seriously.” Less than half of the state’s vaccine-eligible population has had one dose, according to .

In other parts of the country, many districts decided to continue offering virtual learning to accommodate parent demand — even before COVID cases began to rise again. showed two-thirds of the nation’s top districts will offer virtual academies, and the Austin Independent School District in Texas, even its virtual learning program for elementary students outside the district.

The Harrison School District in northwest Arkansas is among those putting final touches on a connectivity fund application and planning to use the money for more hotspots.

Susan Gilley, the district’s executive director of federal programs, said she’s most concerned about students having reliable internet and those “that live so remotely that even cellular Wi-Fi is unavailable.” The district is allowing remote learning for third grade and above.

The 2,700-student district supplied 100 families with hotspots last school year and plans to increase that to 1,000, Gilley said. The district also hopes to purchase 1,100 devices for students and outfit its entire fleet of 37 buses with Wi-Fi routers, up from eight last year.

But some experts want districts to think beyond devices.

“Districts for the most part have plenty of tools already,” said Joseph South, chief learning officer at the International Society for Technology in Education.

The uncertainty about reopening means districts need to be ready to adapt to changing situations, he said. Even if schools don’t close completely this fall because of positive case rates, there have already been examples of students being .

Successful models, South said, “require an approach where technology is being used face-to-face in ways that are effective each day, but that also lay a foundation for a shift to more reliance on the technology if face-to-face engagement has to be curtailed.”

Benton, in Arkansas, added that if districts are going to allow remote learning, he’d like them to give parents better information on how to keep students at home on track. A from the University of Missouri showed that the transition to remote learning put particular stress on Black families who often lacked reliable internet and the technological know-how to keep students connected.

“We can have the best technology, teachers and tools available, but without quality family engagement, we are missing a huge piece for student success,” Benton said.

‘Not all hotspots are equal’

The Emergency Connectivity Fund is similar to an existing internet discount program for schools and libraries, known as E-Rate. Funds can cover the cost of devices, hotspots and routers on Wi-Fi-enabled buses. Larger districts with technology departments might be in a better position to develop strong plans and meet the program’s requirements, Marwell said. But others might just buy more hotspots because that’s easier than negotiating a plan with an internet provider to provide service to students’ homes.

In general, hotspots are only as good as the surrounding cell service, meaning they provide spotty connections in a lot of rural areas and often aren’t strong enough for multiple family members to be online at one time. Wired connections, linked to fiber-optic cable, are faster and more reliable, but many communities still don’t have service. That’s one need the infrastructure bill, which the Senate was expected to pass Tuesday, would address.

Hotspots “worked great for some students,” Marwell said, “but that didn’t work well for a lot of students.”

After a year in which some students had no face-to-face learning, researchers have a better handle on where the nation’s broadband infrastructure fell short in meeting the needs of families with multiple children learning at home.

As the nation transitioned to remote work and learning, complaints to the FCCskyrocketed, according to a recent Carnegie Mellon University . Most users complained that providers offered faster “downstream” service — the ability to download files or videos — than the “upstream” capabilities needed to submit files like school assignments.

“The implications for [internet service providers] are obvious,” the authors wrote. “Even after COVID-19 has been tamed, we will probably see more people working and going to school from home than before the pandemic.” The authors said providers will have to reconsider the speed customers need to upload data “or risk becoming less competitive.”

Companies marketing internet solutions to districts are also trying to address families’ frustrations with unreliable service. Last month, Kajeet — known for enabling school buses to blast Wi-Fi into neighborhoods with limited broadband — launched its new , a fixed connection suitable for households with multiple family members online.

Michael Flood, Kajeet’s senior vice president for education and general manager, added that hotspots are still a better solution for students who aren’t always learning at home. “Not all hotspots are equal,” he said, adding that some are five times as fast as the ones many districts purchased and distributed last year.

In Congress, Democrats in the House and Senate are hoping to turn the temporary Emergency Connectivity Fund into a five-year, $40 billion program. The proposed could turn up as future legislation under the $3.5 trillion Democrats unveiled Monday.

For now, districts are trying to comply with the fine print for the new program. That includes estimating how many students need devices or internet service.

Another requirement is that districts can’t use the funds to provide devices or broadband to students who have been served under another state or federal program, such as last year’s relief funds. In fact, in some districts where students already had devices, officials used those earlier funds to pay for at-home internet. That’s one reason why they’re waiting for a second application window as their needs this year become clearer.

The connectivity fund “is an off-shoot of a program that has a history of being tight on rules and regulations,” Marwell said, referring to E-Rate. “The last thing a school wants to do is spend a million on home broadband and find out they didn’t follow these rules.”