DAYTON, Ohio — In an effort to reach students who don’t have access to WiFi, Dayton Public Schools is now offering students free access through its school buses. 

• Over 30 bues are deployed Monday-Thursday every week, from 9 a.m. until 5:45 p.m.
• Families can park next to buses and students can access the WiFi from their cars
• The school district was able to know who needed access to these services through a surey sent to students 

“The initiative started when we realized that many of our students did not have access to WiFi on a regular basis,” said Dr. Elizabeth Lolli, Dayton Public Schools superintendent. “So we worked with our IT Department and transportation department and ordered WiFi and an antenna that could be placed into each one of the buses.”

Over 30 buses are deployed Monday through Thursday every week from 9 a.m. until 5:45 p.m. They are stationed throughout over 20 different Dayton neighborhoods. Families can park next to buses and students can access the wifi from their cars.

The school district was able to get a better understanding of who needed access to these services through a survey sent out to students back in April.

“The first question was, are you receiving the food? Do you need food? The second question was do you have internet or wifi access and the third question was do you have a device, said Lolli.

Once they compiled those numbers they did one more survey to “make sure we had the right telephone numbers, make sure we had the right contact information for the students,” Lolli said. “So we’ve reached out two different ways/times to try to make sure we cover all the students that we need to cover.”

Although Lolli believes this is helping many students, she admits they still need more resources to help even more. 

“We don’t have a bus sitting there four days a week or five days a week,” she said. “We only have them sitting there for two days or the day. That neighborhood is getting their online lessons from their teachers, but if we had additional WiiFi, we would be able to do that.”

So, to better reach students, the school district has also provided 4,000 Chromebooks to every household. They serve close to 13,000 students in their district. Families with more than 5 students received two. And upperclassmen received even more services.

“Our seniors each, individually, have hotspots, laptops or Chromebooks that they’re working on and then we have also given out our juniors, given them Chromebooks and hotspots as well.”

Lolli says this initiative may be helping students now, but it's is only a temporary fix for a problem facing many school districts in Ohio.

“I think WiFi today is something that every family should have access to,” she said. “So we have put a bandaid on it at Dayton Public by using hotspots and the WiFi buses, but it’s not enough for our families and our students.”