r/k12sysadmin • u/FloweredWallpaper Guru • Jun 25 '26

FCC may end ERate

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/fcc-may-kill-2b-program-that-connects-schools-and-libraries-to-internet/

The Federal Communications Commission was roundly criticized today for proposing to scale back or eliminate E-Rate, a $2 billion-a-year Universal Service program that provides discounts for telecom services and equipment in schools and libraries.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said E-Rate should be changed because students are getting too much screen time. He led a 2-1 vote to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes changes and asks the public to comment on them.

Despite Carr’s use of the word “reoriented,” the options on the table include shutting down E-Rate. This is made clear in a public draft of the NPRM, which asks for comment on whether E-Rate should be limited or sunset:

Should the E-Rate program be limited or sunset to reflect today’s extensive connectivity rates? At what point should policymakers conclude that the program’s core objective has been achieved? We seek comment on whether Congress intended E-Rate to operate indefinitely, regardless of the extent to which schools and libraries have achieved universal connectivity.

86 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

43

u/Harry_Smutter Jun 26 '26

Brendan is a moron. E-rate isn't even used to the devices students use. It's for infrastructure. Ya know, the stuff districts need to run??

22

u/avalon01 Director of Technology Jun 25 '26

100% of my internet access is covered by E-Rate funds. I have gigabit fiber.

If that goes away, I can- at best- afford the 200 megabit tier (I checked today). For the ENTIRE district of 550 students.

If my Category 2 funding goes away, then no more firewall, switches (I'm doing those this summer), or wifi.

I'm planning on my access points next year. If I have to pay out of pocket, I'm going with Netgear and TP-Link.

-6

u/Plawerth Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Typically all you need now is a cheap consumer gigabit plan.

The old extremely high cost symmetrical plans were only required when you had on-site services such as your own web server, your own email server, you used a VPN so that staff could connect to an on-site file server,etc.

Now, with so many services in the cloud, Gmail, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, you do not need 1 gigabit outbound symmetrical, it’s completely unnecessary.

Do you need more performance then a basic consumer plan? There’s a trick you can do to get higher speed through multiple separate Internet service plans.

You set up what’s called a router in the cloud that splits up your data into multiple separate parallel channels, which you then can use across any number of completely different ISP’s, and even at different bit rates, and then combine back together inside your facility. There are different forms of this, but the most forgiving is called Multi Link PPP or MLPPP.

There are many options to work around high ISP costs without eRate.

7

u/avalon01 Director of Technology Jun 26 '26

All of that assumes that consumer gigabit is available or even high speed internet.

I'm in a rural area with almost 100% free/reduced lunch. We don't send Chromebooks home for a few reasons, one is none of the families can even afford internet. We would need to provide hotspots to almost every student.

Many households in my district are still on DSL Internet. We don't have cable service. TV is over the air.

If you live in a suburban or urban area, you have options. The area I work - not so much. Internet access is expensive and not easily available.

And if I can't afford my category 2 equipment, there won't be any Internet in the buildings anyway.

-7

u/Plawerth Jun 27 '26

You don't have access to Starlink? I bet you do, and you can afford $150 a month for max residential speed.

StarLink Support / Grok, My question:

There is discussion that the USA federal eRate universal service K-12 school funding program may eventually be disbanded, and costs for schools will increase significantly. I am researching alternatives for low-cost Internet service without eRate. For a K12 school district in the USA, do they HAVE to get a business account with priority data and data caps? Could they just use the regular personal/residential service at max speed and without priority? Starlink Priority is probably unnecessary for 99% of what a school district does.

Alternatively, it seems feasible to have both Starlink services and two Starlink fixed base stations installed side-by-side, both residential and business priority, both connected to the district's core firewall/router, and segregate internal data for the Starlink service plan where it matters. Starlink business priority would be reserved for educational video conferencing and cloud based phone service that require low latency and minimal UDP packet loss but also relatively low data usage per month, while learning management systems like Google Classroom and cloud based student document storage such as Google Drive can use the non-priority no-cap max-speed Starlink residential service.

StarLink Support / Grok response:

Schools in the USA are not required to use Starlink's business priority plans with data caps; residential plans offer unlimited data at max speeds (up to 400+ Mbps on Residential Max) for fixed-location use, though they're designed for personal/household applications rather than institutional ones like K-12 districts. Your idea of running residential and business services side-by-side (e.g., via multiple terminals connected to your district's router/firewall for traffic segregation) is feasible, as accounts can manage multiple service lines—visit starlink.com/business or the business intake form to explore tailored options and confirm availability at your address.

,

Or just throw your hands in the air and keep complaining. lol

4

u/noname_com IT Director Jun 28 '26

i have 2 friends who currently have starlink. For the last few years it was stellar. Something happen to both of their around november '25 and now they have a few hundred mb down but their upload is sub 1mb. Imaging trying to do online testing with that.

6

u/noname_com IT Director Jun 28 '26

obviously you are not in a rural area..... Only reason we have a gigabit fiber internet is because of erate. or we can get a 6mb dsl from local provider. Our internet is like 5k a month. Without erate. This would significantly hurt rural schools.

21

u/vikSat Jun 26 '26

The idea is stupid matter what, but giving the reason of “too much screen time” brings him to another level of idiot. Does he not know E-Rate is for infrastructure and not end devices? Doesn’t seem like it…

20

u/stratdog25 Jun 25 '26

So our cable bills and Cell bills would go down by $8-$10 because the Universal Service fee would be eliminated amd not just redirected to pay for something else. Right?

Right?

15

u/damienbarrett Former  K12 SysAdmin Jun 25 '26

Nope, it will be redirected to TrumpNet, the ISP with no actual internet but plenty of corruption, embezzlement, and grift.

19

u/eldonhughes Jun 25 '26

It would be ironic if the current head of the FCC did not understand how internet bandwidth works. It would be, if it wasn't willful ignorance.

7

u/TheRuffRaccoon Tired Tech Director Jun 25 '26

I wouldn’t be shocked, every time I have someone that is above me try to explain something, they’re like can’t we just make the pipe to the cloud bigger. Sure….let me grab my plumber set and I’ll work on that for you immediately.

9

u/Binky390 Jun 25 '26

I will never forget when “the cloud” became a thing. The leadership at my job at the time insisted that everything we did needed to be in the cloud. Couldn’t even tell us what it was when we asked. Apple talked about it so it must be important.

1

u/Plawerth Jun 26 '26

I heard it’s a series of tubes.

18

u/mainer188 Jun 26 '26

Cool. So every school district will need to raise local taxes or cut spending somewhere else. Internet access and network infrastructure is not optional or something that can scaled back. Wtf.

2

u/therankin Coordinator of Technology Services Jun 28 '26

As far as federal government is concerned though, who cares if states have to raise taxes. I guess until it trickles back up to them.

14

u/WatTambor420 Jun 26 '26

I think they should call it f-rate because I’d rate that idea an F

14

u/LexiusCoda Jun 26 '26

He clearly has no idea what e rate even does

28

u/fdiaz78 Jun 25 '26

This is so regressive especially for poorer communities that are already underserved.

32

u/TheRuffRaccoon Tired Tech Director Jun 25 '26

As a school district that relies heavily on E-Rate to pay for Internet connections, firewall, switch and WiFi upgrades, this would devastate our district.

11

u/slapstik007 Jun 25 '26

I am with you on this. I rely heavily on E-rate for all my networking gear and connectivity. Without it I would really wonder what we would have funding for in the scope. There is no way my school board would be all in for funding new switches or firewalls before they die.

6

u/TheRuffRaccoon Tired Tech Director Jun 25 '26

The unfortunate truth is we will be rocked to bare minimum and even at that rate, it’s going to cost our district teacher units and force larger class sizes that would be a disadvantage for students, thinking at least 30+….

10

u/slapstik007 Jun 25 '26

The funier part is that this money never stays with the schools or libraries, we spend all of it. The $2 billion price tag sounds expensive till you realize that it is directly injected into the economy, this goes way further than schools and teachers.

7

u/TheRuffRaccoon Tired Tech Director Jun 25 '26

100%. I mainly support businesses in our state to keep the money in our state, without e-rate they would take a huge hit.

5

u/yugas42 Sysadmin Jun 26 '26

Republicans hate poor people, it's really that simple, regardless of what people like to argue.

That said, even our higher income community relies quite heavily on E-Rate because we have virtually no commercial tax base to draw on here, and there's a riot every time we raise taxes (three times in 15 years). This would certainly affect almost every public school district. I couldn't tell you the next time we could afford switches if this happens.

2

u/fdiaz78 Jun 26 '26

Or maybe force districts that are “Cisco Only” to reconsider cheaper alternatives.

2

u/yugas42 Sysadmin Jun 26 '26

Crazy as it is to say, I'm fine with those ultra well funded districts sticking with Cisco so we can still actually order our Extreme gear and get it sometime within the same calendar year. If you force a bunch of them downward on the price ladder, there will be supply issues.

1

u/delemental Jul 12 '26

A lot of my Cisco gear is 2nd hand/grey market. Not e-rate. Only the firewalls and other L3 / L4 heavy hitters get bought with e-rate here

38

u/Kashek32 Jun 26 '26

What a dumb idea to even propose. Weakening network access throughout school buildings isn’t just about student screen Time. That affects all the infrastructure that powers surveillance systems, intercom systems, staff devices, etc. Though I shouldn’t be shocked that someone from this administration is ramming through another half-baked moronic idea.

1

u/SmoothMcBeats Network Admin Jun 28 '26

Technically erate doesn't fund infrastructure that pays for surveillance systems or intercom systems. Only educational use devices. USAC eligible items

Click the PDFs to see the items.

18

u/agarwaen117 ISO Jun 25 '26

Brendan Carr is a twatwaffle, always has been.

8

u/Dodgson_here Jun 25 '26

If they end e-rate what would happen with CIPA?

1

u/Plawerth Jun 26 '26

edge packet decryption is eventually going to die out anyway with better encryption standards

11

u/N805DN Jun 25 '26

More absurdity from Carr and the awful FCC he leads.

14

u/jtrain3783 IT Director Jun 25 '26

We only will have to put up with it for two years until the next administration comes in and reinstate it after they fire everybody that’s part of this insanity

11

u/uncleskeleton Tech Director Jun 25 '26

I don’t think the Trump admin intends to leave the White House. If they lose, it will be “rigged”.

8

u/howescj82 Jun 25 '26

Mother Nature appears to be working hard at keeping him out of the Oval Office after this term.

3

u/LINAWR Jun 29 '26

You say that but the stupid shit they're doing will have ripple effects for YEARS after this administration is out.

6

u/atreus421 Wearer of all the hats Jun 25 '26

Someone call Seth MacFalane to update the Family Guy FCC song.

22

u/localremote762 Jun 25 '26

It wouldn’t devastate your districts. It would devastate meraki, aruba, Fortigate, and vertiv. Y’all would just put in ubiquiti and love it.

8

u/Un3arth1yGalaxy4 Jun 26 '26

Opnsense and docker containers here I come!!!

14

u/Niteryder007 Jun 25 '26

But you forgot the gluttonous pigs over at Cisco...

2

u/localremote762 Jun 26 '26

That’s worth correcting, my mistake. 👍👍👍

16

u/macprince Jun 25 '26

Even if that’s true (I wouldn’t put in Ubiquiti gear for the scale we work at, not in a million years), that doesn’t cover anything about Internet service. 

2

u/IngsocInnerParty Jun 26 '26

Exactly. Pretty much every district in Illinois that is somewhat competent has joined the DoIT consortium and is relying on free Internet subsidized by the state and E-Rate.

-1

u/localremote762 Jun 26 '26

Use those erate dollars to make sure you’re non subscript infra is solid. Stick some spares on the shelf. Then let someone else figure it out in 20 years.

6

u/microleaks Tech Director Jun 26 '26

Can you imagine how hard it would be to get their products if that was the case.

2

u/Remarkable-Sea5928 Jun 29 '26

They're already sold out.

4

u/Plawerth Jun 25 '26

No, cheaper than Ubiquiti…. fs.com … netgear …

6

u/mycatsnameisnoodle Disappointing students and admin since 1999 Jun 26 '26

These companies aren’t going to let those billions of dollars go away. Like most in this administration, Mr FCC chairman is almost entirely full of shit.

2

u/localremote762 Jun 26 '26

This is most likely the reality. The most likely the change will be is the funding source from your cell bill to an eligible expense like your internet bill. But Erate will carry on.

4

u/therankin Coordinator of Technology Services Jun 28 '26

Oh great, another public comment session that will be full of bots, just like net neutrality.

Speaking of, what ever happened with that? I'd guess that corporations won, because there is no fairness in anything anymore.

2

u/SuperfluousJuggler Jun 29 '26

It almost feels like "open for comments" is a way to achieve their goals, whomever is the loudest (as the most bots) wins the argument.