DOWN THE TOILET: The FFC's E-Rate program is designed to provide schools and districts with funds to get better connected with WiFi—assuming those schools and districts actually claim the funds. But there's seems to be a bit of a disconnect, in the form of unused E-Rate money.
Back in April, Gary Rawson, federal programs coordinator for Mississippi’s Department of Information Technology Services, reported that schools and libraries in the Midwest failed to use that money in 2014—more than $38M, in fact. Nearly 11 percent of funds awarded in Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma and Wisconsin went unclaimed in 2014, Rawson reported during the National Association of State Technology Directors’ Midwestern Region seminar. But that's not all—now, Edtech Magazine is reporting that the latest West Coast figures show that Alaska, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota and Wyoming also "missed out on more than $133 million in grants, or more than 26 percent of available funds."
