The Center worked with partners in Lancaster, NH, to ensure that students had internet access to learn from home when Covid-19 shut down schools in the spring of 2020.

The Center teamed up with the Lancaster Rotary Club to quickly get mobile hotspots with prepaid data plans to students from White Mountains Regional High School, which serves the towns of Carroll, Dalton, Jefferson, Lancaster, and Whitefield, N.H. Some of the devices went to students at Groveton High School as well.

The students used the hotspots, which came with 5 gigabytes of prepaid data, to access the data they need over cellular towers. “That should be enough data for them to use Google Classroom, watch assigned videos, email teachers and peers, maybe do a 10-minute hang-out for discussions,” said Rob Scott, Career and Technical Education Director for White Mountain Regional High School, who is distributing the hotspots and helping to set them up.

The project had to come together quickly to ensure that students would have full access to their online learning programs and because the nationwide shift to working and learning from home strained the supply of available devices.

The Covid-19 pandemic has elevated awareness of the ways inequitable digital access affects people, schools and businesses and impedes community revitalization in rural areas.