January 1997 — Exclusive
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The Connected Schools of Belen, New Mexico: A Wireless Success Story
This report is part of the
information-gathering for the National Science Foundation's Wireless
Field Tests for Education Project. We are installing and testing,
under a wide variety of rural and urban educational circumstances,
various wireless devices -- from short-range wireless LANs, to 25
mile T1 radios -- in Colorado. This report in
full, and others pertaining to the project, can be
accessed at the Project's Web site: http://wireless.oldcolo.com.
The 8 schools of the Belen Consolidated School District of Valencia County, New Mexico, span an area over 5 miles wide and 10 miles long centered on this rural agricultural town of 6,500, some 30 miles south of Albuquerque. All 8 schools are linked to each other wirelessly, in ways that dramatically demonstrate the potential, and cost-effectiveness, for typical K-12 school network operations using digital radios operating in frequency bands approved by the FCC for unlicensed use. They also illuminate the limitations of using radios that are required to operate under Part 15 FCC rules, and point to requirements that cannot yet be satisfactorily met in the promising field of spread- spectrum digital radio. In essence, Belen school district is totally networked by no-license, no-monthly cost, T1 wireless communications -- and linked to the Internet from all schools through this network.
Background
Belen is rather typical of a rural district -- serving an area with approximately 12,000 residents, half residing in Belen proper and the remainder on small farms in the surrounding area. It has 6 elementary school buildings, 1 middle school, 1 high school, and an administrative center co-located with an elementary school. It has 4,800 students, with a faculty of 250. The district is composed of lower middle- income residents; 72% of students are Hispanic.
The town and surrounding area are situated on the flat shallow basin west of the Rio Grande River. There are no high hills, but the high school is situated on a rising bluff at the western edge of the district, giving a rough radio line of sight to the other 7 schools. There are no significant natural or man-made obstacles in town.
Districts in the U.S. have four
basic needs
for no-license (or no-recurring-cost) wireless.
The school district made a major decision in 1994, under then-Superintendent Pete Torres, to network all the schools by internal LANs within the separate school building, and provide, as far as its $400,000 technology budget would allow, Internet connectivity. The funds came from a one-time state appropriation for technology for schools.
Before 1995, Belen was typical of schools with a rising, if scattered, interest in telecommunications. There were 5 voice-grade telephone-line equipped classrooms, with modem access to the New Mexico- wide TechNet (which gives teachers individual access to the Internet from anywhere in the state). A few teachers had personal computers and modems at home, from which they could dial into, without paying long distance charges, any commercial, university, or other modem-equipped network, in Albuquerque.
