Jose de Wit
SUN Staff Writer
After five years of unsuccessful attempts, the Española School District could finally get a beefed-up Internet connection and high-speed wireless network, courtesy of cell phone and long-distance telephone users.
The Española School Board approved a three-year contract Sept. 17 with an Austin, Texas-based company that will create a wireless network between District administration offices and all schools except for Dixon, Chimayó and Abiquiú elementary schools. The new technology will make the District’s internal network at least 10 times faster and quadruple Internet connection speeds over the District’s current network.
The bulk of the new service will be paid for by a federal program sustained by a tax on long-distance phone calls.
The new network would support speeds of up to 18 megabits per second, and it will be connected to a six megabit per second Internet line provided by ZiaNet and Windstream, said Leah Frazier, operations manager for Efinity Educational Services, the private contractor that handles technology for the District. District schools are currently wired on a T1 internet line, which can relay information at a maximum of 1.54 megabits per second — the equivalent of a typical home Internet connection.
“And that’s what we share for the entire District,” Frazier said. “The result is like trying to get 20 football players through a garden hose.”
The result is the only way to keep the District’s network running is to block access to any audio or video on the Internet, Frazier said. The faster connection would change that.
Española Valley High School television production teacher Ellen Kaiper said she is looking forward to the improvement. On the District’s current network, Kaiper’s students can’t download video clips for assignments or post exercises to video-sharing site YouTube.
“I’m so glad (we’re getting a new network). Because right now, it’s limiting,” Kaiper said. “Everything right now with moving video is blocked because, as I understand, the system can’t handle it.”
Telecommunications company Trillion Partners will install and own the towers, charging the District a monthly fee to use the network. If Trillion accepts a contract as amended by the Board, the company would start installing towers in November at the District’s Central Office and every District school except Dixon, Chimayó and Abiquiú elementaries. The network could be ready by January, Frazier said.
The District itself will only pay $25,898 a year for the network, or $77,694 over three years. The federal E-rate program will cover the remaining 85 percent of the service’s $517,968, three-year price tag.
E-rate, which is run by a subsidiary of the Federal Communications Commission, helps school districts and public libraries pay for telephone and networking services and is funded by a Universal Service Charge tax tacked onto long-distance phone bills. The program levied a total $6.95 billion in taxes from telecommunications companies and their customers in 2007, according to the Commission’s web site.
E-rate’s 10-year history has been rife with accusations of fraud. Newspapers throughout the country have published accounts of school districts and companies billing E-rate for non-existent services and pocketing the funds, and the non-profit Center for Public Integrity described the program as “honeycombed” with fraud.
When the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee began investigating allegations of E-rate fraud in 2003, Española-based company Computer Assets was one of 13 companies throughout the country targeted by a Congressional audit. Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-LA) sent each company a letter requesting extensive documentation on work the companies performed through E-rate, according to the letter.
According to a SUN report, telecommunications giant Lucent Technologies, through Computer Assets, sold the District $2 million in outdated networking equipment, when other companies were selling superior equipment at similar prices.
Computer Assets and the Española School District were not among the five companies and school district accused of wrongdoing in a final report of the investigation’s findings, which was released in 2005. The report described E-rate as “a well-intentioned program that nonetheless is vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse.”
Trillion, the District and the E-rate program have a long and fuzzy history.
Since 2003, the District has signed contracts with Trillion and applied to fund those contracts through E-rate. Because the contracts with Trillion were conditional on receiving E-rate funding, each of those contracts were subsequently invalidated.
Since Efinity took over the District’s technology department in 2006, the District has missed out on E-rate funding due to missed deadlines, Frazier said. In 2006, the District failed to obtain a letter from the state Education Department approving the District’s technology plan — a prerequisite for E-rate funding. Last year, due to “a lot of administrative mess,” the District failed to provide on time crucial demographic data, Frazier said. How much of a school district’s telecommunications bill is covered by E-rate depends on poverty indicators such as the number of students eligible for the federal reduced and free lunch program.
What happened between 2003 and 2005 is anybody’s guess — the District does not have documentation for E-rate applications for those years, Frazier said.
An online E-rate database shows that in 2003, the District received $128,484 from E-rate to start a contract with Trillion, but never claimed the money.
The database does not say why the District did not accept the funds, but Efinity analyst Michelle Trujillo, who worked for the District’s technology department that year, blamed a revolving door of administrators. Between 2003 and 2005, the District was overseen by three separate superintendents who employed as many technology directors. Trujillo said she recalls former superintendent Pancho Guardiola applied for E-rate funds and signed a contract with Trillion in 2003. When Vernon Jaramillo replaced Guardiola in 2004, he declined the E-rate funding and rejected the Trillion contract, Trujillo said.
The District did not seek E-rate funding for Trillion’s service in 2004, according to the database.
The next year, E-rate awarded the District $407,325 for projects that included a Trillion wireless network, but the District failed to claim any of it, according to the database.