Fifty families in western Marin are set to receive free satellite internet service for the next three years as part of a new project to address disparities in internet access for students in rural communities.
The initiative, led by a partnership of the county government, the Shoreline Unified School District, the Marin County Free Library and service organizations, has already set up SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, for 25 families, with another 25 to follow in the coming months.
The “Shoreline Connectivity Project” is intended to help families with poor internet access or a lack of computer skills who fell behind with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting switch by schools to more online-based education.
“Once kids went back to school things have still not gone back to pre-COVID days,” said Balandra Fregoso, executive director of the Parent Services Project, a San Rafael nonprofit group that is a partner in the program. “A lot of meetings are happening via Zoom. What the pandemic did is it opened up this gap that we did not realize was there around tech equity. We are still teaching parents about platforms that the schools use.”
Many of the families being served by the new program live on western Marin ranches, where internet service is limited. Most of the families are Spanish-speaking as well, Fregoso said.
Carolina Renteria, who lives off Highway 1 in Point Reyes, said her family’s poor internet connection caused conflicts between her four school-aged children during the pandemic, when remote learning was mandated. If all four of children tried to connect to the internet to attend class or do work, they often lost connection. School-issued hotspots did not do much to alleviate the issue either, she said.
As a result, Renteria said her youngest child, who was attending kindergarten at the time, would have to miss her classes occasionally so that her other siblings in higher grade levels could attend theirs.
But after being contacted by the Shoreline Unified School District about the new connectivity project and having Starlink equipment installed at their home this year, Renteria said their connection problems have disappeared.
“It’s been a big change,” said Renteria said, speaking through an interpreter. “It doesn’t lag and we no longer fight over who gets to use the internet. It’s of good quality. I can be more connected because I don’t have to wait and it’s just fast.”
The project is estimated to cost about $390,000 and is being funded through the federal American Rescue Plan stimulus package, the Marin Community Foundation, the Pinkus Family Foundation, the West Marin Fund, the Shoreline Unified School District and the federal Emergency Connectivity Fund.
The project is the latest by the county to address internet connectivity issues, especially in lower-income communities, since the onset of the pandemic. Other projects include free Wi-Fi networks to serve hundreds of homes in San Rafael’s Canal neighborhood and in Marin City.
“The idea was to work through many different communities and geographic regions in the county, all of which are very different and have very different needs,” said Javier Trujillo, chief assistant director of the Marin County Department of Information Services and Technology.
Efforts to address connection issues in western Marin began in 2021. For areas near Tomales Bay and to the north, wireless internet connection can be lacking and the geography makes the expansion of high-speed fiber cost-prohibitive for now, Trujillo said.
As a result, the county turned to Starlink, which uses thousands of low-orbit satellites to provide broadband internet service in areas that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
To identify which families would be part of the new program, the Parent Service Project worked with the Shoreline Unified School District to identify the families most in need of the service. The nonprofit group had already been working with families in the area to teach computer skills during the pandemic and is now helping families install Starlink kits.
At the Shoreline Unified School District, 55% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch as of data in 2020-2021, according to Maria Niggle of the Marin Promise Partnership. Forty-six students did not have an internet connection at home and 52 students had to go to learning hubs that were set up in the area to connect to the internet, Niggle said.
“What we were hearing from family advocates for the schools is parents were driving miles for their kids to have some cell service and they were sitting in their cars for hours trying to access their education,” Niggle said.
The Marin Promise Partnership, which is working to gather data and coordinate the various partners for the project, is a network of more than 100 schools, nonprofit groups, businesses and government agencies focused on addressing education equity issues. Niggle said it hopes to secure more funding sources to expand the project to more families.
Fregoso said the Parent Service Project is training parents who have received the Starlink service and other community members to become mentors for other families around digital literacy and computer education.
“This has been two years in the making and we finally have gotten it off the ground,” Fregoso said of the project. “It’s really exciting to see and I know that we’re making a difference in families’ lives. I’m sad this equity gap exists but I think we’re doing a great job at closing it one device at a time.”
