Libraries lament ‘cascading effects’ of E-Rate’s potential demise

After the Federal Communications Commission voted to review its E-Rate program, libraries across the country are already concerned at how changes to that program might impact their budgets, services and even operating hours.

Commissioners voted 2-1 to examine whether E-Rate is advancing educational outcomes and protecting children’s online safety amid concerns over minors’ screen time. The review is also meant to ensure funds from the program are being spent responsibly and for educational purposes. E-Rate helps pay for discounted services, internet access, equipment and maintenance for schools and libraries.

And at the local level, any effort to curb E-Rate funding or even cut it altogether will be felt keenly. The West Haven Public Library in Connecticut, for example, uses E-Rate to receive a 90% discount for its myriad networking costs, the highest discount available. Having to find between $20,000 and $30,000 from elsewhere to cover the disappearance of those E-Rate funds could be fatal, especially in a town of 55,000 people where 14% are below the poverty line.

“Every budget runs so small that you don't have that capacity when it could potentially automatically disappear,” said Colleen Bailie, the library’s executive director.

It’s a similar story for the Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System, which has seven library locations across four counties in the state. That system has relied on E-Rate to help cover its networking costs as far back as 1999, when it was used to subsidize having fax machines. As the government has required many services to be available digitally, like filing taxes with the Internal Revenue Service, the library has served as a vital hub for that, with E-Rate helping keep its costs down.

“When you transfer these services from being accepted in the mail to making them a digital format, people have to have the ability to get those there however they can and to transfer those,” said Misty Hawkins, the region’s library director. “If people do not have home access, they have to have the ability to send those somewhere, and the libraries, that's the place for many Americans.”

With those budgetary worries comes what Bailie called the “cascading effects” from the threat of reduced services, especially if E-Rate is to sunset completely or even just be rerouted to focus on rural areas, as has been proposed by the FCC.

“If E-Rate goes away, we're going to have to switch funding from someplace else in order to be able to continue,” Bailie said. “You still have to have computer access, we still have to have network access, so something else may go away. We may have to lower the amount of programming that we do, maybe looking at shortened hours, because that's one of the key places that we can cut back our budget costs.”

Hawkins said she is also concerned about libraries’ inability to maintain their existing networks, as some E-Rate funding can be used for upkeep and to buy equipment. She said that means “unnecessary hardship on local infrastructures,” especially having built a “beautiful broadband network” that has worked as intended until now.

E-Rate’s demise would force libraries and schools to look elsewhere to make up the funding shortfall, something Hawkins said would add an extra “administrative burden” that many staffs are likely not prepared for. Bailie said it will mean looking for extra grant opportunities, while her library has a small endowment that could be tapped. But not everyone is so lucky, she said.

“When we set up our budget, we budget down to the pennies,” Bailie said. “You lose a chunk of money, you have to figure out where you're going to get that from.”

Others have offered to step up and fill some of those gaps. Nonprofit Mission Telecom stepped in last year to offer funding to pay for Wi-Fi hotspots and Wi-Fi access on school buses after the FCC said E-Rate funds could not be used for those purposes. Mark Colwill, Mission Telecom’s director of broadband operations, said zeroing out E-Rate makes no sense, as it is “one of those rare stories where Congress passes a law, and it actually does exactly what's intended.”

“I do think if libraries had a need, the communities would step up and potentially help out, but a $5 billion hole is a pretty big hole to fill for schools and libraries,” Colwill said.

As for the future, libraries are already gearing up for a fight to save E-Rate funding and influence the FCC’s review. The American Library Association quickly launched a national advocacy campaign after the vote alongside partners from the nonprofit Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition, and it pledged to “fill the record” of the FCC’s public comment period with “the voices of the schools, libraries, and communities that depend on E-Rate most.”

“The program has been running very well for the last number of years. Certainly, there are ways in which it can be improved and simplified, but that's not something that this notice really addresses,” said Bob Bocher, an ALA senior fellow who consults with the association and Wisconsin’s state library agency. “[Making] statements such as, ‘Well, most of the libraries and schools have broadband access, maybe it's time to phase out the program or significantly reduce it in such a fashion,’ that's not what the law says… It doesn't say anything about, “If you get your internet access, then you don't need this money anymore.’”