There are about 793,000 studentsenrolled in the city’s K-12 public school programs. The large majority likely already have internet at home: A New York State Education Department report in fall 2020 found that 13 percent of NYC public school students, or roughly 114,000, had “insufficient internet access.” A multitude of programs offering free internet to students in need — like those in homeless shelters, public housing, and on public benefits — have launched or expanded in the five years since.
The new Chromebook purchase would have been far cheaper if the city had chosen to buy laptops that connect to the internet via WiFi, since the city wouldn’t have needed to pay for cell service, which accounts for about two-thirds of the cost of the new contracts. (The hardware would have been cheaper, too; LTE-connected Chromebooks tend to be more expensive than WiFi-only models.)
“There’s no reason why the City of New York should be wasting tens of millions of dollars paying for something we don’t actually need when those dollars could be better spent connecting families with the existing programs,” said former City Council contracts committee chair Benjamin Kallos, who in 2017 brokered a deal with telecom giant Spectrum to cap internet costs at $15 per month for low-income NYC families and seniors.