South Bend Schools to deploy wifi hotspots

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Starting Wednesday, students will be able to sit outside buses at 20 locations around the city and connect to the district Wi-Fi on both regular and high-speed connections in order to operate e-learning websites, the district said.

Superintendent Dr. Todd Cummings said it’s part of the district’s master plan to keep functioning even without kids in classes in wake of coronavirus precautions.

“We wanted to make sure that we we’re meeting our kids basic needs so that we had food covered, we had lunch, we had supper, we had laundry covered, and that we had Wi-Fi in our neighborhoods covered,” Cummings said.

The district head of transportation, Rene Sanchez, expects a full map of locations and hours of these Wi-Fi hotspots to be released Tuesday.

“Since we realize that students sometimes don’t have access to Wi-Fi day outside of the school day, this will enable them to do whatever homework or if there’s other things that interest them that they can utilize it outside of the school day,” Sanchez said.