Without Plans, Budgets, or Timelines, DOE Spent Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Internet Upgrades That Left Many Schools with Slow Service

(New York, NY) — Since 2007, the New York City Department of Education has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade internet connectivity in schools, but the service still doesn’t meet educators’ needs, a new audit from New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer found. The DOE embarked on the installation of high speed internet connectivity a decade ago, but it could not provide the auditors with any strategic plans, timelines, or budgets. That leaves taxpayers unable to determine whether the massive installation happened quickly or efficiently, and raises questions about basic organizational management at the DOE.

As part of the audit, the Comptroller’s Office surveyed every public middle school in the city. Of the more than 400 school responses, almost half said internet speeds don’t meet their instructional needs, one-third claimed they are not satisfied with current internet service, 55 percent cited difficulty streaming video, and 62 percent said they were not aware of DOE tools that have been created to manage internet use. The survey questions were approved in advance by the DOE.

“This is an example of exactly what not to do. With taxpayer dollars at stake, with a complex high speed internet connectivity installation to all of the City’s middle schools, the DOE lacked even the most straightforward management systems. Our kids deserve 21^st century classrooms that prepare them for a 21^st century economy. But without any semblance of strategic planning or budgeting, we’ve ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on service that our schools say doesn’t serve them well,” New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said. “The City has a responsibility to ensure efficiency with every taxpayer dollar and to maximize every resource dedicate to our children’s education. The lack of organizational discipline, quality control, and overall accountability is simply startling — and as technology advances exponentially, the DOE must do better. It has to change.”

In 2007, the Department of Education began upgrading internet infrastructure in schools to deliver high-speed connections of at least 10 megabits per second.  The Department’s Capital Plan for 2010 through 2014 included nearly $1 billion for technological enhancements, of which $347.6 million was for broadband connectivity and wireless service. The Department added $650 million to sustain high speed internet connectivity and increase internet capacity in its Capital Plan for 2015 through 2019. Auditors tested the fiber optic connections that support high speed connectivity and found them to be available to all City middle schools.

However, the Comptroller’s Office found that DOE had no plans or total budgets in place during the decade-long project to upgrade schools’ technology infrastructure. Missing information included project plans, implementation timelines, progress reports, costs, dates of installation, and all the names of contractors who worked on the project.

Without these documents, the City has no way to ensure projects were completed on time or on budget. As a result, it raises the specter of fraud, theft, waste, and abuse. In September 2012, for example, DOE contractor Willard Lanham was convicted of a $1.7 million theft and mail fraud in connection with a DOE internet upgrade contract. He was sentenced to 37 months in jail.

Auditors also found that many middle school educators are unhappy with the quality and reliability of internet connections in their schools. The Comptroller’s Office surveyed leaders from all 503 public middle schools in the city and received responses from nearly 400 of them. Survey findings include:

• 45 percent of respondents reported that the speed of internet service did not meet their instructional needs;
• 33 percent were not satisfied with the current internet service;
• 55 percent reported difficulties streaming videos during class; and
• 62 percent were not aware of the tools DOE had created for them to manage their internet use and request bandwidth upgrades.

The Comptroller’s Office issued nine recommendations to the DOE, including that the Department improve communication with middle school leaders, proactively partner with middle schools to review their technology needs, and maintain real oversight of future technology projects to protect from fraud, theft, waste, and abuse.

Excerpts from School Leaders

“The internet service is extremely slow at times.  It can be disheartening to have students wait for the next step of the program to show up on the screen.  Students get bored and give up.” — Bronx School Leader

 “The internet service needs a MAJOR upgrade to keep up with and meet the demands of our school’s instructional practices. Everything is entirely too slow. This poor service interferes with everyday teaching practice and has become a problem.” — Brooklyn School Leader 

“Internet service is horribly slow and as a Computer Science school, it is unacceptable.” — Bronx School Leader 

“The internet can be very slow, particularly wireless access. Most teachers don’t even try to stream video anymore, only using what can be downloaded or shown from a DVD. Any website that is content-rich can also lag, making it difficult to use multimedia content in the classroom.” — Brooklyn School Leader

“The internet service in our building is over-burdened due to the large numbers of students and wireless devices in the building.  There is too little connectivity for the number of students and devices that need it.  While there is a push to use technology as a teaching tool and to educate students on the uses of technology, the wireless capacity in our building does not allow for entire classes to use the internet at the same time.  This is extremely problematic as students attempt to conduct research projects, utilize Google Drive, take assessments, check grades, and conduct investigations for math and science.” — Manhattan School Leader

“There is nothing that I like about the internet service in my building. After a health checkup last year, we received an upgrade. Unfortunately, we still peak over our bandwidth throughout the entire day… We cannot accommodate or even plan a BYOD policy or 1 to 1 plan because of the inferior infrastructure.” — Queens School Leader 

“We have a 1 to 1 ratio of Chromebooks for students at our school. This has brought the issue of slowing down our network when multiple classrooms are using the Chromebooks at a given moment. This has brought the issues of teachers not wanting to use the laptops because of how slow the internet has been working.” — Manhattan School Leader

“The Internet service does not meet the needs of the school.” — Bronx School Leader

“The internet is constantly a problem.  When it goes down, it will be down for an extended period of time. For example, the wireless was down for the entire week that was Brooklyn’s Coding week so we had to do our coding initiative though classroom instruction which makes no sense.  Internet to administrative computers is also often slow or not working.  I have no idea how to give us more capacity but we need it.” — Brooklyn School Leader 

“Inconsistent and this means that teachers won’t use computers in the classroom for anything meaningful since they can’t rely on a connection. I typically have to do all my own work and prep at home since I can’t get pages to load at school.” — Manhattan School Leader

“One major concern that I have with the internet in our school is that it is very, very slow and many times students and teachers have to abandon a video or project due to the internet not working or taking too long to open a site or streamline a video.” — Queens School Leader

“Internet service can barely be used when there are many rooms on same floors on internet at the same time. We have to schedule when ELA department use NewsELA websites vs when Math department use their websites.” — Brooklyn School Leader

“We need additional speed, less blocking of educational web sites.” — Staten Island School Leader 

“I dislike everything about our service provider and the Queens infrastructure…So much RED tape.” — Queens School Leader

“We rely on heavy use of the internet to launch and employ the online applications that we use every day. This has been almost impossible this year because internet connectivity is so poor.  We regularly cannot connect or launch any internet service.  This occurs consistently, in all parts of the building.” — Manhattan School Leader

“Our campus school shares the internet bandwidth resources provided. We are still using a shared T1 connection for all 3 schools. We have been experiencing Proxy issues since the start of the year. We have also dramatically increased the number of wireless computers (32 desktops and 96 laptops), iPads (30), and Android devices (120) on top of the 60 pre-existing networked networked desktops and 30 wireless laptops. Our network drops routinely go dead (or are not connected due to server rack space) and our wireless drags. We have dead spots in the building where connectivity is sporadic at best.” — Brooklyn School Leader

“There is NOT consistent reliable service.   We are a 1:1 iPad school with over 1100 devices connecting wirelessly…we need drastic upgrades immediately [sic] PLEASE HELP!!!!” — Manhattan School Leader

“Dislike the current internet service at this time. Slow connection!” — Staten Island School Leader

“a) Teachers are often discouraged when trying to implement ipads or laptops into their lessons because of [sic] they are fearful of wasting time trying to get all of these devices connected to the internet. b) Increase wifi and broadband strength.” — Queens School Leader

“We determined there are over 2000 wireless laptops in the building. Between 9 am and 3pm the building peaks out at 95 mbps daily. We are rated at 50 mbps.   Slowness and connectivity issues have been an ongoing problem for at least 3 years!  Quest is particularly bound to the internet because we use GAFE (docs, sharing, email.) Faculty, Staff and students struggle to work on their computers because of the slowness.” — Manhattan School Leader

“The internet service in our school can be spotty at times especially after 11 am.  We are frequently thrown off sites and it can take awhile [sic] for a streamed video to buffer before it can be seen.  It would be great if the DOE could expand our bandwidth as we move forward with technology.” — Staten Island School Leader

“Internet access has become increasingly poor during this school year.  Pages don’t load or load improperly and need to be refreshed multiple times. There have been several times where educational sites were blocked, yet social media sites were readily available.  Bandwidth is poor and often speed deteriorates during the day.” — Manhattan School Leader

“So imagine this:  Teachers create a video on how to use to textual evidence in their essay or how to write numbers in scientific notation.  We schedule for all students to watch these videos in their classroom using only the teacher desktop (which we only have 25) at 9 am.  Student will take a quiz afterwards.  Teachers press Play and the video takes 3 minutes to load 5 seconds of video.   We have to stop, postpone, make hundreds and hundreds of copies of the same content and redo the lesson again.  Awful! If we use Google Apps, Google Drive takes a long time to load in the computer lab or when we use a 30 cart laptop cart.  Students are unable to work with their online assignments and accountability goes out the window.” — Manhattan School Leader

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