Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and Square, has announced that he will donate $10m toward computers and internet access for public schools in Oakland, a city where half of students lack reliable access to either.
Dorsey dropped the news after the Oakland mayor, Libby Schaaf, tweeted a video of one those 25,000 students without access to the technology. “Every student deserves the ability to learn from home,” wrote Schaaf.
Libby Schaaf
(@LibbySchaaf)Meet Jessica. She is one of the 25,000 Oakland students who lack consistent access to the internet or a computer. Every student deserves the ability to learn from home. That’s why we are launching #OaklandUndivided, a $12.5M plan to close the digital divide for good. pic.twitter.com/4Oq5U2osW4
@jack quickly answered the call.
jack
(@jack)$10mm to give EVERY single child in Oakland access to a laptop and internet in their homes, closing the digital divide. Heard Mayor @LibbySchaaf and @OUSDNews’ call and funding immediately. Thank you! https://t.co/BBqFZHtS4I
City officials say the funding will immediately help fill a need for Oakland’s 50,000 public school students.
David Silver, the mayor’s director of education, said Dorsey’s gift was particularly timely.
About two months ago, when coronavirus prompted widespread school closures, Oakland schools distributed about 20,000 Chromebooks, Silver said. But because students would have to return them when school resumed, a shortage remained.
“Jack’s gift allows us to put a device in the hand of every single kid in Oakland. And because it came in now, we can order the computers, clean them up, and by the time kids come back to school in the fall, they’re ready,” Silver said.
It’s not the first contribution Dorsey has made toward fighting the impact of coronavirus. Last month, he announced that he would donate $1bn of Square shares to a charitable fund, called Start Small, to “fund global Covid-19 relief”– by far the biggest single donation to the global fight to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
This week, Schaaf launched a program called Oakland Undivided, which aimed to raise $12.5m to permanently close the digital divide in the city. With Dorsey’s $10m donation, coupled with funds already raised, the program is now only about $700,000 shy of its goal.
Silver, however, said the fundraising would continue. Devices break; some are lost. Closing the gap for good meant raising $4m a year, every year, starting next summer, he said.
With only two weeks left in the school year, nearly 1,400 Oakland students still need a device and about 3,400 don’t have internet access, reported Berkeleyside. Students who remain offline are kept from accessing educational content and connecting with teachers.
The need persists even in the shadow of Silicon Valley. As schools shut down, and educators hustled to equip students with devices, a need for hotspots and access to the internet often went unmet. Back orders mounted, compounding wait times for students left unconnected.
Lack of access to the internet is only one way existing inequities have manifested themselves during the pandemic. The same families without internet often face food scarcity or unstable living conditions – both of which have been exacerbated with businesses closed and parents out of work.
Nearly three-quarters of Oakland’s students qualify for free and reduced lunch, a rough proxy for poverty. About a third of all students are still learning English, according to state data.
Education officials worry the digital divide will only widen existing performance gaps between families in poverty and those who are better off. One economist penned an op-ed in the New York Times predicting the education gap would one day show up in the labor force.
Dorsey’s donation won’t be enough to permanently close the digital divide in Oakland. But will certainly help. Schaaf called Dorsey’s announcement a “game changer”.
