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Telecommunications
and the E-Rate Richard Riley's recent letter [to the Post on June 15] on the E-rate repeated the Administration policy that internet connections should be made to "every classroom," not just to a few locations within a school. Early this year, the D.C. school system applied for subsidies to accomplish exactly that -- to wire every one of the District's 5,500 classrooms. In response, the D.C. superintendent of schools received a letter from the CEO of the Schools and Libraries Corporation reminding him of the immense burden such an effort would impose on the school system. In a March 23 letter to Juliun Becton, Ira Fishman of the library corporation commented that by making this application the District was promising to commit all the resources necessary "to put in place multiple computers and/or video equipment for each room . . . training for teachers in every room. . . content software . . . electrical plant . . . [and] maintenance." He also noted that the certification that an applicant has secured all these resources is "made under penalty of civil and criminal enforcement." As this letter makes obvious, the policy that every classroom must be wired, regardless of cost, educational payoff, or other school needs has the brainless quality of an old Soviet five-year plan. It contains potential to do serious damage by sopping up school resources in the effort provide redundant connections. Perhaps the library corporation should give Mr. Riley some remedial courses in the economics of education. In another letter to The Post on the same day, Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard also made a plea for internet access. But of the $2.02 billion in subsidies so far requested by schools and libraries, only $88 million is for access to the net. Another $656 million is for ordinary telecommunications services, such as telephones and faxes. The other $1.3 billion is for "internal connections," which means wires, switches, software, and routers, not for internet charges. This program has the potential to turn into a massive subsidy for the hardware necessary to provide these redundant connections and a misdirected educational investment. With friends like these, our schools need no enemies.
JAMES V. DeLONG Washington
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