Bowser Jeff

Name: Bowser Jeff

E-mail: jbowser@alameda-coe.k12.ca.us

Organization: Alameda County Office of Education

City and State: Hayward, CA

Area of Employment: education

How I heard about Network Democracy:

via Santa Cruz County Office of Education

My experience in this area:

I am the Director of Bay Area Education Network--BAE-Network. We are an Internet Service Provider for K-12 schools and Community Colleges in Northern California. We offer highly discounted high bandwidth LAN to Internet access by connecting a large volume of schools. Presently we serve over 7 county offices of education, two community colleges, one county government, and 20 school districts. In offering these services we are faced with two obstacles 1) the most expensive part of bringing schools online is the cost of telecommunications, not the cost of an ISP. 2) the fiscal boundaries that the LATA boundaries provide for offering services to other schools. LATA boundaries did not take into consideration county or school district boundaries. Schools are organized by districts and then by counties. Often you will find a school district with a school outside the LATA boundary or a county with an entire district outside the boundaries. Since the districts and/or county office of education is faced with a huge telecommunication cost ($1200 - $1600 per month for a DS-1) often the telecommunication does not occur.

What I hope to learn:

More information regarding how Universal Service is defined

Additional comments:

I have a large wealth of polically active and well spoken county office and district superintendents that believe in our efforts and that schools need to be online.