Environmental Scan
Environmental Scan
Brownsville ISD is part of the Rio Grande Valley and located at the most southern tip of Texas. Living by the Gulf of Mexico gives us extremely warm and humid weather all year long with access to beautiful beaches. Our winter consists of two months, January and February. Brownsville is considered a “border town” since it is located on the border of Mexico. About 94% of the city is considered Hispanic or Latino. According to the Brownsville ISD website, Brownsville Independent School District (BISD), encompassing 95 square miles, is the largest employer in the Rio Grande Valley. Approximately 6,000 employees have accepted the challenge of serving a population of 37,898 students. The Digital Divide in south Texas is real and we painfully experienced that during the Pandemic in 2020. According to the Texas State Teachers Association, to have digital equity in Texas, all households need to have access to affordable, reliable, and high-speed internet. Nationally, 78 percent of all households subscribe to the internet at any speed, but households in both rural and lower income counties trail the national average by 13 points. Two cities—Laredo, where almost a third (32.3%) of residents lack any internet access, and Brownsville (30.9%)—consistently rank near the bottom among U.S. cities with more than 50,000 households. The Texas State Teachers Association continues stating West Texas (63%), South Texas (60%), and the Panhandle (58%) all have significantly less internet access than the rest of the state. According to the PM Magazine Article, Raymond Gonzales states the city’s own research found that more than half of Brownsville residents, and potentially as many as three quarters, lacked access to broadband internet, defined as 25 Mbps upload speed and 10 Mbps download speed. Gonzales states the city of Brownsville committed to investing $20 million in a digital backbone for the city, commonly known as a “middle-mile” segment that links a core network to the local network (known as the “last mile”). This fiber route will not only make it easier for residents and businesses to access broadband connectivity, it will also be combined with utilities to enable digital water meters, digital streetlights, and other smart infrastructure. The city’s RFP was issued in June 2021, and they plan for the project to conclude by the end of 2023. Currently, according to myRGV.com, the city of Brownsville signed a Middle Mile Connection Agreement that will provide broadband internet access via Fiber, which can handle large amounts of data. Gonzales states the company Lit communities will help to pay for the “last mile” for the city to connect to the “digital backbone” to the rest of the country.
References:
About. Brownsville Independent School District. (2022, October 28). https://www.bisd.us/about
Clark, S. (2022, July 20). Cob signs broadband agreement: Lit communities to pay for building “last mile.” MyRGV.com. https://myrgv.com/local-news/2022/07/20/cob-signs-broadband-agreement-lit-communities-to-pay-for-building-last-mile/
Closing the Digital Divide for Students in Texas. Texas State Teachers Association. (2020, August). https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/86R/handouts/C0102019021908001/59c29ecb-d982-45be-89a3-0a80c1b352ff.PDF
Gonzales, R. (2021, September 1). Closing the latino digital divide. ICMA. https://icma.org/articles/pm-magazine/closing-latino-digital-divide
Great graphics! This really shows the need well!
ReplyDeleteBarb,
ReplyDeleteAfter I finished your post, I looked at the links you shared. The TSTA article at https://publicpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Closing-the-Digital-Divide-for-Students-in-Texas.pdf was very informative. So were the other referenced articles. The article by Steve Clark regarding "the middle mile" was a great addition to your post. The article pointed out that, "the city had committed to building the middle mile using nearly $20 million in federal funds made available to the city through the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan Act." Thank you for your great post!
Hi Barbara,
ReplyDeleteThe graphics are awesome! They present the information really well. I am from Laredo and was able to see that our area has a somewhat high percentage of households with broadband access. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Barbara! Being from Donna, I was happy to see a neighboring district report their study. I really liked the graphics that you used. It was helpful to visualize the broadband access.
ReplyDelete