A partnership in the California county is connecting 50 families with no-cost Starlink Internet service as part of a larger effort to address disparities in Internet access for students in rural communities. 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.
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 Pincus 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.
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