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Meeting W.Va.’s Broadband Needs

On this episode of The Legislature Today, Randy Yohe sits down with Del. Daniel Linville, R-Cabell, and Broadband Consultant Charlie Dennie to broadband connectivity for West Virginians.

On this episode of The Legislature Today, Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, and other members of the upper chamber held a press conference to discuss the recent pause on new permits for liquefied natural gas exports. Briana Heaney has the story.

In the House, the House Committee on Energy and Manufacturing discussed a bill that would prevent publicly sourced air pollution data from being used in lawsuits and regulatory proceedings.

Also, in the House, a resolution regarding a constitutional amendment over a woman’s reproductive rights is under consideration.

In the Senate, the Senate Education Committee quickly moved along five bills, many of which updated existing educational programs. One bill would add another university to the list of eligible institutions for the Promise Scholarship. Chris Schulz has more.

And, the full Senate approved and sent one bill to the House. It would permit wineries to serve wine without serving food, and it would also permit wine to be served at festivals. The Senate advanced eight other bills. Two of these bills, if passed without amendments, will head to the governor’s desk. Briana Heaney has more.

Advocates from across the state gathered at the state capitol Thursday to bring attention to sexual violence. Emily Rice has the story.

Finally, in meeting the plan to have broadband connectivity for all of West Virginia within five years, there are progress and time markers that must be met to get all the $1.2 billion federal dollars to complete the work. Randy Yohe sits down with Del. Daniel Linville, R-Cabell, and Broadband Consultant Charlie Dennie to talk about meeting those markers.

Having trouble viewing the video below? Click here to watch it on YouTube.

The Legislature Today is West Virginia’s only television/radio simulcast devoted to covering the state’s 60-day regular legislative session.

Watch or listen to new episodes Monday through Friday at 6 p.m. on West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

Online Academic Resources Now Available For Southern W.Va. Students

Students in some southern counties will soon have access to online academic help.

Students and their families from Mercer, Monroe, Summers, Raleigh and Wyoming counties currently enrolled in 7th or 8th grade can now access 24/7 academic support via Tutor.com. Students and parents can connect with a live tutor during sessions, drop off writing samples or assignments to get direct feedback on assignments, prepare for tests and more.

The online resources are made available to students via a partnership between Tutor.com and GEAR UP Southern West Virginia (SWV).

Program Director Kristen O’Sullivan, said GEAR UP is a national Department of Education program to help young people in economically challenged areas to reach post-secondary education.

“GEAR UP Southern West Virginia is a grant that, through Concord University, we just received in 2022-2023,” she said. “We work with a cohort of students that started with the sixth and seventh grade last year, and now they’re in seventh and eighth grade. We will follow them all the way through until their first year of post-secondary education, whether that be a four-year school, a two-year degree, the military, and we just do everything possible with them to help them be prepared and to believe that they belong and have a plan for the future.”

Tutor.com is also a resource to help parents gain confidence while helping students with schoolwork. As a native of southern West Virginia, O’Sullivan said she would have loved this kind of support when raising her own children.

“I can just remember those nights when they were struggling with something in math or struggling with certain pieces of papers they were working on, where I didn’t feel I had the capacity to be able to help them much,” she said. “Parents will no longer have to worry about that, they will have those experts right there at all times to be able to help.”

O’Sullivan said that teachers will also benefit with access to the same resources, as well as reports on what the students have been getting tutoring on.

“A teacher, let’s say in a math class, may want to be able to look back and see what are the areas the students are continuing to have questions about, so that they can then address them again in the classroom,” she said.

O’Sullivan acknowledged that internet access continues to be an issue in southern West Virginia and across the state, but implementation of COVID-19 era strategies can help to bridge the gap.

“I can tell you that Tutor.com is fully accessible from cell phones as well as from computers,” she said. “I know a lot of families, that is their internet is using their cell phone, they don’t have internet services in their homes. There’s also the things that we have learned through COVID to help people in our rural communities. They can access internet in our community libraries, in the schools, a lot of times this program will be used not just at home, but will be used in after school programming, lunchtime programming sometimes before school.”

Students younger than 13 must submit a signed permission slip before accessing the online resources.

A Poetic Family Tradition And Our Song Of The Week, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, Jeanette Wilson’s family poems about African American life in southwest Virginia are connecting the past to the present in a preview of this week’s Inside Appalachia. And, our Mountain Stage Song of the Week comes from pioneering alt-rock sextet, Wilco.

On this West Virginia Morning, Jeanette Wilson’s family poems about African American life in southwest Virginia are connecting the past to the present. Folkways reporter Connie Kitts brings us a preview of this week’s Inside Appalachia show.

Also, Emily Rice reports that the majority of West Virginia’s children in foster care are actually teenagers and many of them are placed in group homes instead of foster homes.

And, our Mountain Stage Song of the Week comes from pioneering alt-rock sextet, Wilco. We listen to the title track from their latest, 12th studio album, “Cruel Country,” where they lean back into their roots for what the band itself labels as a “country album,” with their innovation and influences all on display.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Concord University and Shepherd University.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

West Virginia Morning is produced with help from Bill Lynch, Caroline MacGregor, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Briana Heaney, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Liz McCormick, and Randy Yohe.

Eric Douglas is our news director. Caroline MacGregor is our assistant news director and producer.

Teresa Wills is our host.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

Federal Funds Help Private Schools Expand Internet Access

Seven private West Virginia schools will receive more than $120,000 from the Federal Communications Commission.

Seven private West Virginia schools will receive more than $120,000 from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The largest individual award of $53,850 will go to the Eastern Panhandle Preparatory Academy, a charter school in Kearneysville.

The other six awards are:

$37,600 – St. Patrick School, Weston
$6,926 – St. Michael School, Wheeling
$6,926 – Central Catholic High School, Wheeling
$6,926 – Our Lady of Peace School, Wheeling
$6,233 – St. Paul School, Weirton
$3,694 – Fairmont Catholic School, Fairmont

The funding is made possible through the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) and will help the schools purchase laptops and tablets, Wi-Fi hotspots, modems, routers and broadband connections for students, faculty and staff.

The ECF was authorized as part of the American Rescue Plan to provide $7.17 billion to expand distance learning and connectivity around the country.

The most recent allocation last year went to Greenbrier, Nicholas, Wayne, Kanawha, Cabell and Lincoln County School Districts.

W.Va. Communications Workers Union Leader Surprised, Pleased With Tentative Frontier Contract Agreement

Now heading to a rank and file vote, the tentative four-year contract agreement reached Saturday between the Communications Workers of America and Frontier Communications covers about 1,400 mostly West Virginia based employees.

CWA Local 2001 President J.D. Thompson said he thinks hard work and employee diligence contributed to the positive outcome.

“Our bargaining committee put in long, hard hours,” Thompson said. “And the employees around the state who participated in mobilization and just keeping the public aware, we were in it for the long haul.”

Thompson said he appreciates that the contract maintains health benefits, includes wage increases, and – with $1.2 billion coming to the state for broadband expansion – keeps all-important job security provisions.

“A large part of our membership is covered by a no layoff provision,” Thompson said. “With the fiber work that’s coming in, it maintains that Frontier workers, union workers, will be the ones getting the lion’s share of that work.”

A Frontier Communications spokesperson released this statement:

“We have been working constructively with CWA and are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement that is good for our employees, our customers and our business. We recognize the critical importance of our communications services to West Virginia. Our goal throughout the negotiations process has been to continue to provide our employees with some of the best jobs in the state, while enabling us to successfully operate our business for years to come. This agreement accomplishes that.”

Thompson said contract details should be sent out to the membership within the next couple of days.

“And then, shortly thereafter, we’ll be doing the vote with membership to either accept it or decline it,” he said. “We’re hoping to have everything wrapped up by the 29th of September.”

W.Va.’s $1.2 Billion Broadband Connectivity Program Underway

Plans to connect the last 300,000 locations in West Virginia with affordable internet went public on Friday.

In laying out the plan to spend more than $1.2 billion federal dollars for broadband deployment, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she asked an internet expert a few years ago what it would take to get the last West Virginian connected.

“The things he said were time and money,” Capito said. “Well, we’ve got the money now, the time should be condensed.”

Gathered in the Governor’s Reception Room at the State Capitol, state and federal leaders explained that Implementing the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program dictates spending the still unsecured funding on connecting first the unserved then the underserved. The funds will be released in installments after the state’s five-year action plan, due August 12, is approved. You can see the West Virginia Deployment timeline here.

West Virginia Office of Broadband director Kelly Workman said after the submitted plan, comes a series of proposals.

“Up next is our initial proposal,” Workman said. “The initial proposal includes 20 different sections. Basically, the state of West Virginia will be telling the federal government how we intend to spend this money, where we will spend it, how we will execute our challenge process and so that will go through those 20 sections and answer all those questions.”

A national broadband project leader, Assistant U.S. Secretary of Commerce and chief of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Alan Davidson said before he writes a big check, the state must pass a big homework assignment.

“There are a whole series of requirements about how the money will be spent, how the grants will be given, and just making sure that there’s good oversight,” Davidson said. “So this money gets spent quickly, but wisely, and that we’ve got good hooks in at the back end to make sure it’s getting spent the right way.”

Davidson pointed out that many West Virginians are eligible for the $30/Month Affordable Connectivity Program.

The roadblocks to statewide broadband connectivity have always been the high provider costs and challenges of running cable up the last mountain or the end of the deepest hollow.

Workman says concerns over equipment supply chain issues and bucket trucks back ordered have been planned for and addressed.

“They have scaled up,” Workman said. “We are hearing that most of the supply chain issues are leveling out. The providers are telling us that it can be managed. We proactively reached out to the providers in West Virginia, to say, what would you like to see in this plan? What can we do to facilitate your expansion to the most rural parts of our state? All of their comments will be integrated into our plan. And I think that that process in our relationships with those providers, is extremely beneficial to us going forward.”

Davidson says his boss, President Biden, likes to say this isn’t just a connection program, it’s a new jobs program, creating up to 150,000 nationwide.

“And we want to make sure that those jobs are filled by the communities that are being served by these networks,” he said. “This is a wakeup call for folks. Hey, we’re saying these jobs are coming and we’re trying to do all we can to make sure that people are trained up and ready for them.”

West Virginia is hoping to secure the first 20 percent of the funding, about $240 million, this time next year. The remaining 80 percent, roughly $960 million, will be distributed in 2025 once the federal government approves the state’s final proposal and reviews how well it complied with its initial proposal. The plan outlines statewide broadband connectivity to be completed by 2028.