More than 28,000 students in Chicago Public Schools will continue to have free home internet access through an extension of Chicago Connected, a pandemic-era city program that provides broadband or hotspot services to low-income families.
The extension will cost approximately $2 million in city funds, the mayor’s office announced. The program was initially set to expire last summer but has now been extended twice. No new families can currently enroll, though any student who qualified for free or reduced-price meals was previously eligible.
Every student deserves an equal opportunity to learn and succeed in the classroom, and access to internet should not stand in the way, Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement.
Roughly 60,000 CPS students have participated in Chicago Connected over the past five years. Nearly 1 in 3 qualifying families reported having no internet access prior to the program, according to CPS. Since its launch, nearly all of the city’s community areas with the largest drops in disconnection rates are on the South and West sides.
A review of the program’s first year by advocacy group Kids First Chicago found that 93 percent of participating students were economically disadvantaged and nearly a third were English language learners.
The initiative was initially a response to the shift to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some students, depending on grade level, participated in at-home learning for more than a year after the initial shutdown. At the time, $50 million was earmarked for the four-year program, funded through a mix of city funds and philanthropic grants.
The latest extension ensures continuity for current participants as the city works to identify long-term funding solutions for digital access. The program has been cited as a national model for closing the digital divide in urban school districts.
