{"id":24269,"date":"2020-04-30T16:24:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T23:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=24269"},"modified":"2020-04-30T16:24:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T23:24:31","slug":"new-bill-to-boost-internet-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=24269","title":{"rendered":"NEW BILL TO BOOST INTERNET ACCESS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four Senate Democrats on Thursday announced their intentions to introduce legislation aimed at ensuring that K-12 students have access to the internet amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced schools across the country to pivot to online learning.<\/p>\n

The Emergency Educational Connections Act would create a special $4 billion fund for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to disburse to schools and libraries to buy Wi-Fi hotspots, routers and internet-connected devices.<\/p>\n

The legislation will be introduced by Sens.\u00a0Ed Markey<\/a>\u00a0(D-Mass.),\u00a0Chris Van Hollen<\/a>\u00a0(D-Md.),\u00a0Michael Bennet<\/a>\u00a0(D-Colo.) and\u00a0Maggie Hassan<\/a>\u00a0(D-N.H.) when the Senate returns to Washington next week.<\/p>\n

The bill will act as companion legislation Rep.\u00a0Grace Meng<\/a>‘s (D-N.Y.) proposal in the House earlier this month, with the change of increasing the appropriation from $2 billion to $4 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated our existing \u2018homework gap\u2019 and spurred a growing \u2018learning gap\u2019 that will have a lasting impact on America\u2019s children,\u201d said the senators in a joint statement Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the magnitude of this pandemic and its effects on teaching, we must increase our investment beyond $2 billion to $4 billion,” they continued. “Our students come first, and we cannot allow any of them to fall behind as a result of this crisis. We are proud to enjoy the support of more than 50 organizations that focus every day on educating and protecting our nation\u2019s youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legislation comes as schools across the country remain shuttered in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four Senate Democrats on Thursday announced...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-tech","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24270,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24269\/revisions\/24270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}