The Trump administration’s plan to revise, or potentially discontinue, broadband discounts for schools and libraries is overwhelmingly unpopular, judging by the thousands of comments submitted since August.
Pleas from school administrators, librarians and education advocates to protect E-Rate represent the majority of the statements to the Federal Communications Commission. In June, Chairman Brendan Carr called for “right-sizing” the program and linked concerns about children’s excessive screen time to the 30-year-old program. But the education sector emphasizes that the funding supports not only instruction, but also systems like security, payroll and nutrition.
“Before a student even enters a classroom, E-Rate helps provide the network infrastructure that keeps Minnesota’s school districts running,” wrote Kimberley Dunn Lewis, associate director of government relations for the Minnesota School Boards Association. “When that connectivity is unavailable or unreliable, it can disrupt basic school operations and compromise districts’ ability to safely and effectively serve students.”
One common theme across the nearly 3,200 comments submitted by the Oct. 13 deadline was that decisions about screen time limits and whether parents should be able to opt their children out of edtech programs shouldn’t be made in Washington.
“Imposing them from the federal level would interfere with, and potentially conflict with, state and local efforts already underway,” ExcelinEd, an advocacy organization, argued in its comment. “The FCC’s proposed actions would attach instructional mandates to a program whose purpose is affordable connectivity rather than education policy.”
During the next phase of the process, which ends Nov. 12, the public can submit replies to comments already submitted. Those defending the program, which offers discounts of up to 90% in low-income communities, include private school administrators.
“Funds that are currently available for educational programs, student support services and operational needs would instead need to be redirected toward internet and technology infrastructure costs,” wrote Justin Willenborg, a technology coordinator at Holy Cross High School in Louisville, Kentucky.
Leaders from two library systems in northwest Pennsylvania, for example, said that reallocating funds toward internet costs at their 16 branches would “remove funding from important literacy and education programs” and that “homeschooling families would lose fast, reliable internet as a critical tool for curriculum development.”
Those who agree with Carr that E-Rate may have fulfilled its purpose include Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste. He wrote that due in part to the government’s Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, internet access in underserved communities has increased and the FCC should “eliminate duplication of broadband services that are provided by other federal funding opportunities and private sector investment.”
Even though E-Rate discounts don’t apply to devices or software, some parents expressed concern that the program has enabled schools’ growing reliance on edtech. They include parent Sandhya Polu, who wrote that she and her husband maintain a “minimum screen household” and have tried, unsuccessfully, to opt their son out of classroom technology.
“Schools everywhere have bowed down to false gods full of empty promises,” she wrote. “Edtech products lack any credible, independent evidence of educational benefit.”
Many district officials and education groups repeated boilerplate language in their submissions, stating that the FCC should “preserve and strengthen” the program. But Noelle Ellerson Ng, chief advocacy and governance officer at AASA, the School Superintendents Association, tried to describe the potential impact on local schools by sharing details from FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez’s early October visit to the Bedford School District in New Hampshire.
“The conversation included discussion of the evolving technology needs of schools,
including the increasing importance of robust network infrastructure as districts adopt new digital tools and emerging technologies,” Ng wrote.
Gomez, a Democrat, is not the one educators need to convince if they want to save the program. She has defended it as a “lifeline to opportunity” for students without reliable, high-speed internet access at home.
Concerns about screen time are real, but policing children’s behavior in schools goes far beyond our stated mandate. The FCC is not the nation’s parent. It is not the nation’s teacher. And it is not the nation’s school board.
— Anna M. Gomez (@AGomezFCC) June 25, 2026
‘Small districts and libraries’
One particular target for Carr and other Republicans is the E-Rate consulting industry that has expanded over the years to assist schools in completing the application paperwork. In his initial comments on the program review, he said consultants should complete a mandatory annual anti-fraud and E-Rate training program.
He isn’t the first FCC official to call for changes to the consulting process. Ajit Pai, chair during the first Trump administration, proposed eliminating consultants altogether.
“My plan would dramatically simplify E-Rate,” he wrote in 2014 while he was a commissioner. “The initial application form would be just a single page. No more need to hire outside consultants.”
But Stacy Hawthorne, board chair of the Consortium for School Networking, an edtech advocacy organization, said consultants are still necessary because the process is complex.
“Seven in 10 E-rate applicants receive less than $50,000 a year, so these are small districts and libraries without a grants office,” she said. “The consultant ensures the process follows federal rules and that the paperwork withstands an audit.”
Survey results from Funds for Learning, one of the largest consulting groups, shows that out of more than 2,400 respondents, including districts and libraries, 70% have either one person on staff or no one who is trained in the E-Rate process. Half of the respondents use a consultant.
But to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who chairs the commerce committee, consulting groups deserve stronger oversight and may have too much influence over district’s technology spending decisions.
“Consultant compensation structures can reward higher spending rather than cost control,” the committee wrote in a report released last week. The committee staff, for example, questioned why the Fairfax County district in northern Virginia, with 177,000 students, paid Funds for Learning significantly less for consulting services, in the $33,000 to $45,000 range, than the nearby 52,000-student District of Columbia Public Schools, which spent about $130,000 over a similar time period.
John Harrington, CEO of Funds for Learning, explained that both districts “bought very different things. Fairfax uses us for a limited set of services. D.C. uses us for full support on a large, complex application.”
He agreed with the committee that there should be more transparency into the consulting process. The group’s comments to the FCC support requiring consultants to be registered, to state who pays them and to disclose whether they have ties to a vendor, like an internet provider.
The commerce committee report also suggested that consultants too often double as advocates for the program, participating for example in the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition, which has opposed changes to E-Rate.
In addition, Cruz’s report noted that there’s significant overlap between members of the Universal Service Administrative Company, the nonprofit that administers E-Rate, and those “with a direct financial stake” in the program.
In response to the committee’s critique, Joey Wender, executive director of the coalition, pointed to the Government Accountability Office’s December conclusion that, compared to several other federal programs, E-Rate met all nine practices for preventing fraud, waste and abuse. The FCC’s inspector general also noted in 2024 that improper payments in the program had fallen below 1.5%.
“E-Rate has a strong record of program integrity, and policymakers should build on that success,” Wender said.
The coalition’s own study, released earlier this month, estimates that eliminating the $2.6 billion program would cost the economy approximately $4.2 billion as districts tighten their budgets and cut labor costs. “Those reductions propagate through household income, spending and tax revenues,” according to the Brattle Group, a financial consulting firm commissioned to do the analysis.
That’s what concerns Amanda Kordelski, director of libraries and instructional technology for the Norman Public Schools in Oklahoma. The district saves about $3.9 million each year because of E-Rate discounts. Those savings allow her to purchase databases and research materials for students.
“Having to absorb that in our general fund will result in the loss of teaching positions,” she said. Any budget cuts would create more competition between departments. “I feel like I have a great case for why these are essential tools, but the bottom line is everybody else has that, too.”
Disclosure: The 74 used the AI program Claude for an initial analysis of the nearly 3,200 comments submitted and then reviewed dozens of individual comments.