Families with a kid getting free lunch at school can get a special deal for cheap home Internet, but relatively few take advantage of it. So to promote the service, Metro educators are telling parents at meetings, sending flyers home with kids, and yes, mentioning it on Facebook.
Almost 15 thousand families in Nashville are eligible for the $10 per month web service from Comcast. But the web provider says in its first year, only 760 got connected.
“If you want to know my wishlist, I want every family in Metro Schools to have Internet access.”
Metro Schools’ technology chief John Williams says web access helps kids do homework, and also helps parents keep up with what’s going on at school.
“Some of our parents in our district have never had the opportunity to get any kind of training or to use a computer or to be on the Internet. So it not only helps the kids, it helps the entire family.”
Comcast agreed to provide the cheap web service in 2011 as part of a deal to win government approval of its merger with NBC Universal.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM