Kansas City Public Schools has been selected to be apart of Sprint’s ‘1Million Project’, where one million low income high school students nationwide will receive free wireless devices.
Kansas City Public Schools is one of five school districts nationwide to be apart of Sprint’s pilot program.
“We are very fortunate,” Southeast High School principal, Jason Whitt said.
With Sprint’s 1Million Project, the program will give free wireless devices to students in need across the map, from smartphones to laptops to hotspot devices.
“It’ll help a lot because we’re trying to do great things here and to do great things, you have to have the resources,” Southeast High School sophomore, Davion Stacker said. “When you have the resources, it allows you to move forward and it allows you to expand your mind and your thinking. So it'll be a great deal.”
For Kansas City Schools, some students will be receiving hotspot devices.
“It’ll be different for each school district, but for us, since we already give our student Chromebooks, that is already internet capable, our students will be given Wi-Fi devices to connect hotspots,” Whitt said. “Our students will have hot spots with a designated number of gigabytes that they can download, per month, free of charge.”
Whitt says although students had been provided these Chromebooks, the problem is that some students didn’t have internet access once they left school.
“I've had students sit out on these front steps of the school before school earlier in the morning, to connect to Wi-Fi, just so they could finish their homework,” Whitt said.
Students will be given individual passwords, where they’ll be able to do homework at school or home.
“We have to have all the technology to get your work done. Such as, in math, we use online teaching you have to have your internet access to get your work done,” Stacker said.
“High School is preparing us for college. And the internet, like I said, without the internet, you pretty much can't use your laptop,” Southeast junior Omari Tatum said. “We were real excited about it, especially it being here at Southeast. So I think it'll really landmark us.”
The pilot program will begin in January, where 500 hotspot devices will be distributed to KCPS students.
Sprint’s 1Million Project will expand over the course of five years, hoping to reach one million students, nationwide.
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Rae Daniel can be reached at Rae.Daniel@KSHB.com.
