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For nearly 30 years, E-Rate has been what one might call the most boring of utility programs — a broadband subsidy that quietly connects America's schools and libraries. Now the FCC is asking whether it should exist at all.
Reg Leichty, founding partner of Foresight Law + Policy and a longtime E-Rate advocate, joined the Tech & Learning podcast to break down the commission's newly opened review of the program. His first message: don't panic. His second: take this seriously.
"Sunsetting," he notes, is the polite framing — the proceeding is an inquiry into whether the investment should be terminated.
Leichty pushes back on the review's central premise, which ties E-Rate to concerns about student screen time. Questions about how much time kids spend online are worth asking, he says, but these fall outside the scope of the program and the FCC's telecommunications mandate — an inappropriate merger of two different streams of work.
The stakes are concrete. E-Rate is a need-based subsidy, scaled to community poverty levels, that supports everything from dark fiber projects to wireless access points. Remove it, and those costs fall on local communities — hitting hardest in low-income districts and expensive-to-connect rural areas such as the Nebraska town where Leichty grew up. He also sees a contradiction in questioning school connectivity at the very moment the administration is championing AI readiness.
Still, Leichty argues periodic review is healthy, and this proceeding is a chance to modernize the program's badly dated cybersecurity provisions using early learnings from the FCC's cybersecurity pilot.
The timeline offers breathing room: a 60-day comment period once the notice hits the Federal Register, 30 more days for replies, and likely no implementation before 2028.
Leichty's advice for district leaders: contact your members of Congress this month to educate them about what E-Rate does in their district, and file comments through the FCC's electronic filing system when the window opens.
Take action: The FCC's comment window opens once the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is published in the Federal Register, and as Leichty notes, the commission is obligated to review every comment it receives.
- District leaders can file directly through the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System — reference WC Docket No. 26-133 — using either a written document or the express comment field.
- The full NPRM and commissioner statements are available on the FCC's website.
- For advocacy resources and updates on the proceeding, CoSN has issued a statement on the review and maintains ongoing E-Rate advocacy tools for members.
- And per Leichty's two-part strategy: don't wait for the comment window — contact your House member and senators this month and tell them what E-Rate funds in your district.
