Kansas City Public Schools was selected for Sprint’s 1Million Project.
This week, roughly 500 students received free wireless hotspots through the project’s pilot program, which provides free wireless devices for students who do not have internet access at home.
“This will help our students drastically. On average they have about two and a half hours of homework every night,” Lincoln College Preparatory Academy Principal Steve Evans said. “And this will give them the opportunity of getting their work done and not school as the only place they can have access. They can have access wherever they're at.”
Rhebe Fulbright is a sophomore at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy and is one of the students receiving a hotspot device.
“I've been having to go to the library or Panera just to get my homework done and so it gives me more, I don't have to go anywhere,” Fulbright said. “I can just stay and do my homework instead of having to walk everywhere and try and get my homework done.”
Fulbright’s passion is writing; she hopes to become an author or English teacher.
“It’s like my escape I guess," Fulbright said. "It's bringing someone else into this world that you just make up and I just love writing."
Through Sprint’s program, Fulbright said it will help her in the future.
“I can search up better colleges I want to go to because it's really hard to find time to look up all my college stuff while I'm trying to do my homework because you only have a certain amount of time there,” she said.
The project’s goal is to help 1 million high school students nationwide. To get there, over the next five years, roughly 200,000 new students will join the program each year, and participate throughout their four-year high school career.
“This is something that could change the whole entire world because this helps all kids, all teenagers,” Lincoln College Preparatory Academy student Amelia Cox said.
If a device does get lost, Evans said Sprint’s system will be able to deactivate the device and reissue another one to a student.
The pilot program goes on until the end of this school year, and the nationwide program will begin in the fall of 2017.
Lincoln College Preparatory Academy is one of seven KCPS high schools receiving the free devices and services.
The other schools are Central Academy of Excellence, Manual Career Tech Center, Northeast High School, Paseo Academy, Southeast High School, and Success Academy at Anderson.
For school districts interested in applying to the program, click here for more information. The deadline for applications is April 30, 2017.
