The sudden shutdown of Houston schools has sent educators scrambling for a highly-prized possession — and no, it’s not toilet paper.

Wireless hotspots are in enormous demand — and short supply — as local school leaders look to help lower-income students connect to online learning amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, several district officials and tech leaders said.

The hotspots, often about the size of a hockey puck or smartphone, deliver internet service to all laptops, tablets and other internet-ready devices within a limited range, typically extending the length of a household.

Providing families with hotspots remains the best available option for connecting the massive number of Houston-area students, likely exceeding 100,000, who lack broadband internet at home during the extended shutdown of schools. Broadband access allows students to students to watch videos and engage in virtual classrooms with their teachers and classmates.

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To date, districts have received thousands of hotspots, but the need for connectivity far outpaces the availability of devices. Two officials deeply involved in attempting to buy hotspots — Houston ISD’s chief technology officer and the president of the 1Million Project Foundation, a nonprofit that provides free hotspots and internet service to school districts — said lower-grade devices can be obtained in about a month, while higher-quality hotspots will take three to four months to receive.

“Everyone in the country right now, every district, is trying to buy hotspots and laptops,” said Houston ISD Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan, whose administration received 4,000 hotspots last week for some of its 210,000 students. “We’re just putting our orders in and praying our orders will be honored.”

Officials from AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, three of the leading wireless hotspot providers, did not directly respond to questions for this article about their hotspot inventories and ability to obtain large number of devices in the coming weeks.

Digital inequity

The at-home internet divide serves as one of the primary inequities between students from richer and poorer families, with the potential to widen already-large achievement gaps during the pandemic. While school districts do not track students’ internet availability at home, U.S. Census estimates show more than 420,000 Greater Houston households, roughly 17 percent, do not have a broadband internet subscription.

The absence of internet has forced countless students to learn through paper packets and cell phones, depriving them of online educational programs and closer contact with their teachers.

“If they don’t have the teachers they had while school was there, they’ll be lost,” said Johnnie Walker, whose kindergarten and third-grade grandsons are using her Android phone for their online schoolwork in HISD. “Plus, it’s draining my data. Eventually, I’m sure it’s going to be costly.”

In HISD, administrators said about 114,000 students — or slightly more than half of its student population — did not log onto the district’s primary learning application during the week of March 30. In addition, HISD officials said teachers and other staff members had not yet made contact with about 19,000 students, or 9 percent, as of last week.

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In Fort Bend ISD, Superintendent Charles Dupre said roughly 29,500 students, or 38 percent, had not signed into its online learning system as of April 3.

“The need is real. We know that for sure,” Dupre said. “Sometimes, I think we operate from the perspective that everybody has a cell phone or smart device in their hands and they have access. And they might, but it’s hard to do school full-time on a cell phone.”

The rush on hotspots understandably shocked suppliers unprepared for a nationwide shutdown in schools. Doug Michelman, president of the 1Million Project Foundation, said the market for hotspots “probably sold out two weeks ago” amid huge demand from the education and business sectors.

“Most people didn’t want them on February 15 because a good smartphone will serve as a hotspot if you want it to,” said Michelman, whose organization has delivered about 350,000 devices to districts. “People who sold hotspots, they had a month or five weeks of inventory, and they didn’t sell a lot of units to begin with.

Supply vs. demand

To date, several of the state’s largest school districts have had limited success obtaining hotspots.

HISD officials said they received a shipment of 4,000 last Wednesday. The district already had distributed about 21,500 hotspots provided in the past two years by the 1Million Project Foundation.

In Aldine ISD, administrators also secured 4,000 hotspots last week. The 67,250-student district serves one of the lowest-income populations in Houston, with Census estimates showing nearly 1-in-3 households lacks a broadband internet subscription.

Aldine Chief Financial Officer Tamika Alford-Stephens said district officials have not yet found additional hotspots after the initial order, which was placed more than two weeks ago.

“Since then, the supply chain has dried up even more so, and it’s been challenging to ensure all of our students who need that accessibility can get that,” Alford-Stephens said.

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Dallas ISD, the state’s second-largest district, expects to receive 15,000 hotspots sometime next month, with board members agreeing to spend up to $2.5 million to maintain service on the devices through June 2021. District officials said about 30 percent of 18,000 families that responded to a survey said they did not have internet access at home.

“We had estimated this could go on indefinitely, and so I think we could potentially be using these hotspots over the course of the summer if there are any instructional programs then, as well as into next year,” Dallas ISD Chief Technology Officer Jack Kelanic said. “We are taking more than the 30- or 60-day view on this.”

Other districts, however, have not obtained their needed number of hotspots. In Spring ISD, administrators still are “investigating the purchase and use of wireless hotspots, with mixed responses from vendors,” a district spokeswoman said.

Dupre said Fort Bend officials originally ordered about 4,000 hotspots, but only received 2,000 after a supplier “pulled back and started distributing more broadly.”

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Education leaders said they are planning to spend six- and seven figures on hotspots and wireless service, depending on the number of devices available. Hotspot devices typically cost about $50 to $100 each for the hardware, with monthly service costs ranging from $20 to $50, depending on the amount of data purchased.

Several district administrators said they easily will be able to afford the costs, in part because they are saving money on school bus gas, substitute teachers and other costs amid school closures.

“We’ve got the money. We’ve got the procurement structure,” Dupre said. “It’s just a matter of access.”

jacob.carpenter@chron.com

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