Reboot School-Internet Effort

The Internet-for-schools program that Vice President Al Gore inaugurated in January at Pacoima Elementary School sounded almost too good to be true. As recent events have shown, it was.

Sold as a kind of 21st century Marshall Plan that would help disadvantaged public schools enter the Digital Age by wiring them for high-speed Internet access, the program was castigated in Congress last week as “a raw deal for consumers.” Democrats and Republicans alike were rightly upset by cost estimates for the Internet wiring programs that have skyrocketed to $4 billion a year.

The “E-rate” program, including both schools and libraries, was to be subsidized by the phone companies. Last year, AT&T; Corp. told Congress that if the Federal Communications Commission agreed to reduce the access fees that long-distance carriers had to pay local phone companies, it would absorb E-rate costs. The FCC reduced the fees, but last month AT&T; reneged and announced it would pay for the program by imposing a 5% fee on its customers’ interstate calls. MCI Communications followed suit.

Maybe it’s time to pull the plug on E-rate, as Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) urged last week. But the concept is still worthy, extending the biggest helping hand to the poorest schools. And jobs increasingly require the high-tech skills that E-rate was meant to foster.

First, Congress needs to get a grip on the flaws of the current program. A valuable first step would be the proposal by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for a U.S. General Accounting Office audit of the E-rate applications process, including the 30,000 applications already filed by schools. The current rules allow computer vendors and Internet service providers to help schools write grant proposals, virtually inviting fraud. The GAO should also study what Consumers Union has described as “dramatic waste” in the program.

With an audit to work from, Congress could repair or rebuild the program to be fair to both schools and consumers. In the meantime, the long-distance companies should scrap their consumer surcharges and put the money they save on lower connect charges into escrow.

It’s too bad schools may have to stay on hold for the money needed to come online. But greed has turned a fine, modest idea for a public/private partnership into a boondoggle.