Telecommunications is changing the school board's role

By Arthur D. Sheekey

Your role as a school board member is about to change: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is carving out a new role for school boards as service providers or brokers of on-air and online programming that will support an expanded community of learners. In designating public schools as a focal point for networking communities, Section 254 of the Telecommunications Act compels school boards to take a leadership role in ensuring that all households, as well as all schools, have access to educational services. Before long, in other words, an entire community--not just its school-age kids--will have hands-on access to the new technologies.

Already, the wired school is becoming an accepted notion: The public seems willing to spend time and money to wire schools and equip them with modern computers linked to advanced telecommunications networks. States are shouldering much of the financial burden, and technology companies are also pitching in. And when the wired school is commonplace, the wired community won't be far behind.

Still, in the midst of all this ferment, several legitimate policy questions remain unanswered or even unacknowledged--especially regarding plans to create fully networked communities or electronic villages. What assurance is there, for example, that advanced networked services will make teachers' jobs any easier? Some might argue that the job will become more demanding as parents and students gain greater access to teachers. How does that increased access factor into the teacher contract? Will teachers have to be paid more if they are spending more time interacting with parents and students outside the confines of the usual school day? That's a policy issue you and your fellow board members will need to examine closely.

You'll also need to give serious consideration to the socioeconomic ramifications of establishing greater technological links between home and school. Many poor families cannot afford to buy the technology that allows their children to work on school projects at home. Clearly, kids from wealthier families will have the edge--not only because they will be more likely to have access to telecommunications at home, but because their parents, by and large, are more technologically savvy than poorer parents.

As a policy maker working to bridge the technological gap between home and school, you cannot ignore this imbalance. You must find ways to increase the opportunities for poorer kids, being careful not to limit the power of those who already have the technology in the name of righting the imbalance.

Equally important, you must recognize that the voting public can make or break a good technology initiative. In many communities, there is a growing and reasonable concern that electronic networks are not worth the investment because they provide limited services to a limited number of families. Garnering wide public support in such a situation is difficult. As a consequence, you have to recognize that people who are not directly associated with the schools are nevertheless important constituents.

One approach is to offer education and information services to adults who no longer have children in school, to senior citizens, and to parents who send their children to private schools. Show them that they, too, can benefit from the power of an electronic village. By bringing these constituents into the fold, you will help transform them from technological cynics into cyber cheerleaders. But it will take policy leadership to make that happen.

Your policy role

Where can school boards find answers to the difficult policy questions surrounding technology? Two recent publications offer help. The first--Creating a Learning Society: Initiatives for Education and Technology, a report from the Aspen Institute's Forum on Communications and Society--provides an analysis and a set of recommendations about the power of telecommunications technologies to challenge the traditional ways of teaching children. Participants at the Aspen forum urged local communities to use emerging networks for interconnecting families and creating greater cooperation among community-based organizations. Ensuring equitable access to electronic services, they say, may require the creation of new "access points" to education and public information services. Such access points might include local libraries or community centers equipped with computer workstations. (For more information, call Amy Gamer at 202-467-5818.)

The second publication--Creating Learning Communities: Practical, Universal Networking for Learning in Schools and Homes, a report from the EPIE Institute in Hampton Bays, N.Y.--provides a long list of realistic suggestions for achieving the full benefits of networked services. This report pays particular attention to a number of major concerns, including how networking can be effectively used to strengthen at-home learning for students; how parents can support at-home learning; and how teachers can involve parents in their kids' learning. In addition, the authors challenge local school boards to ensure that electronic enhancements of at-home learning are accessible to all students and parents. (For more information, call Ken Komoski at 516-728-9100.)

In addition, the 1994 report by the National Education Commission on Time and Learning, Prisoners of Time, serves as a good reminder that educational services can no longer be limited to the school site or constrained by the requirements of 180 days a year and six hours of classroom time a day. In most local communities, many educational resources and sources of public information currently lie fallow. Each community has a wealth of educational services that can be up-linked to an intranet or local web site. For example, local public television stations typically offer online services. Such local entities, which offer education programs and valuable public information, could merge with school programs to integrate services for local families.

Of course, the local service providers will have to compete with a cascade of other services, which may be more entertainment-oriented than educational. That is why you need to meet the grand visions of commercial entrepreneurs with considerable foresight and planning--even, perhaps, some skepticism.

Your board's first step should be to engage a wide range of community-based organizations in an effort to strengthen the community's learning resources, including resources available in schools, community access points, and individual households. Also, people throughout the community must gain hands-on experience with network technologies. Otherwise, the opportunity to foster a wide range of public support--and to build community expertise--will be lost.

Your advocacy role

The typical student spends more than 5.6 waking hours a day at home--many of those hours in front of a television set. The private telecommunications sector has its eye on these kids: Marketing surveys suggest that the major educational software providers expect greater profits from the home market than from the school market. A predictable outcome of advanced universal service, then, will be a deluge of interactive games and home-shopping channels. Neither federal nor state agencies are seriously considering the importance of identifying and making available worthwhile and affordable educational services.

That leaves the field open for community leaders and school boards to step in. Extending public education services to households must become a higher priority. And who better than local education leaders like you to be strong advocates for directing the benefits of electronic services to individual households?

You will continue to be responsible for deciding what educational materials and services will be available to students, not only in the classroom during school hours, but beyond the traditional constraints of time and place. Making such choices is not an easy task, but it must become one of your top priorities.

No one network solution is right for all schools and communities. But a number of guidelines are available to help your district avoid making mistakes. The EPIE report, for example, provides a snapshot of do's and don'ts, and its authors urge school boards not to take on this task without the help and support of other community leaders and groups. An integrated "community server" of public services has a greater chance to survive and compete than an education server or school web page. Other resources in the community can lend assistance, and local businesses may underwrite some of the operational costs.

Techno advocates say, "If you build it, they will come." That kind of faith might be necessary to proceed with networked services, but it is not enough. Mechanisms should be in place to monitor the technical performance of networks and determine who's benefitting from them. For example, if a network is available solely to classrooms and households with advanced work stations, it will have little or no effect on equalizing educational opportunities for all children.

Actively creating new visions for a learning community or electronic village makes a whole lot more sense than sitting back and waiting to measure the benefits and outcomes of a wired school or classroom. For the sake of our children, let's admit that wiring a school is a worthwhile objective but not a remedy for inadequate learning. What we really need to do is examine the needs and resources of our communities and plan to network the services that are most needed.

-- Arthur D. Sheekey is president of the Public Service Telecommunications Corporation in Falls Church, Va.