The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on students who would normally be enjoying interaction with their fellow students and face-to-face guidance from their teachers. As K-12 schools in the state of Florida will not be returning to in-person classes this year, children are adjusting to being away from school and having to adapt to distance learning without little notice. The change is especially challenging for students with little or no access to the internet.

I was eager to help when the DRMP Geographic Information Systems (GIS) team was approached with the opportunity to make a meaningful difference for Alachua County students who are adjusting to online learning. As a GIS analyst working on the Alachua County Public Schools’ School Bus Wi-Fi project, I was able to assist students without reliable access to the internet to get the access they need to online resources. The school district had the capability to outfit a number of their school buses to serve as Wi-Fi hot spots around the county and just needed to know where to park them every day to give access to the students who needed them the most. Using various data sources, we helped the district decide on almost 50 final sites that optimized the number of students that could use them conveniently. Most of those identified sites were community centers, apartment complexes and churches.

My team was given the task to cross-check a list of initial candidate sites identified by the school district.  Our GIS analysts developed a heat map using data from the U.S. Census, student populations within neighborhoods, household income, pedestrian infrastructure, availability of parking and other factors. Having worked with the district since 2015, my team was able to use other various data sets gathered on other district projects. With all of this data, we performed a kernel density analysis to calculate the concentration of students in the district’s neighborhoods. The analysis conducted helped identify 10 additional sites for the district to consider and ultimately choose the best sites out of an initial list of 70. Using DRMP’s final recommendation, the district has begun to regularly deploy Wi-Fi-enabled buses to the places where they can reach the most students.  

Beginning in April 2020, the hot spots were made available for about three hours every weekday in the chosen locations. Students within150-200 feet of the parked bus, either at home or in a vehicle, are able to access the Wi-Fi network provided by the school district for free. And they recently received added support with a $5,000 grant from the Florida Education Foundation’s Distance Learning Innovations Mini-Grant program. When the school district approached us about this project, I knew we could make a difference. Accessing Wi-Fi is just one hurdle for many students adjusting to a new normal, and our team was happy to help them focus on learning.