Speakers
(in order of appearance)
Rachel Bird Niebling, Senior Policy and Advocacy Associate, Alliance for Excellent Education
Sarah Morris, Senior Policy Counsel, Open Technology Institute, New America
John Windhausen, Executive Director, SHLB Coalition
Blair Levin, Senior Non-Resident Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, and Executive Director of Gig.U
Amina Fazlullah, Director of Policy, Benton Foundation (with Edyael Casaperalta, Public Knowledge)
Panelists
Noelle Ellerson, Associate Executive Director, AASA, The School Superintendents Association
Neal Neuberger, Executive Director, Institute for e-Health Policy
Stacey Aldrich, COSLA and State Librarian of Hawaii (Incoming)
Blair Levin, Brookings Institution
The Alliance for Excellent Education, SHLB Coalition, New America, and Benton Foundation invite you to join us on March 17, 2015 - the five-year anniversary of the National Broadband Plan - to review the community anchor institution broadband goals, accomplishments and unfinished work.
At the mid-point of the timeline for achieving the National Broadband Plan's Goal #4 (calling for Anchor Institutions to have 1 Gigabit per second broadband by the year 2020), the United States has made great strides but has much more work to do. High-quality broadband is vitally important for schools, libraries, health providers and other anchor institutions to provide digital learning opportunities, tele-medicine services and other essential on-line services to their communities. The federal government and many state governments have taken significant steps to improve the broadband capabilities of the nation's schools, libraries and health care providers, but we will need to re-double efforts to reach this goal by the year 2020, particularly in rural areas.
Blair Levin, lead author of the FCC's National Broadband Plan, will headline the event. The SHLB Coalition will launch its Anchor Institution Action Plan Initiative, and the Benton Foundation will review the progress on the National Broadband Plan recommendations regarding community anchor institutions. The agenda will also include the Alliance for Excellent Education, New America, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, the Institute for e-Health Policy, and AASA - the School Superintendents Association.
The event will be webcast and will be available at http://all4ed.org/webinar-event/mar-17-2015/.
For media related questions and to RSVP to attend in person please email Emily Olson at eolson@shlb.org or call at 202-263-4626.