Internet Speeds at 47 Cleveland Area Schools Below FCC Standard

(TNS) — Nearly 50 Greater Cleveland school districts have not met the 1 megabit per second per student goal for Internet speed in the classroom, according to data from Connect K-12, joining more than half of school districts in the state for failing to meet Internet speeds baselines for schools.

In 2020, the Federal Communication Commission upped the bandwidth minimum to 1 Mbps per student in each school district, a rate 10 times faster than the previous minimum in 2013 of 100 Kbps per student. Every Ohio school district met the previous benchmark.

In the United States, nearly six in 10 school districts met or exceeded the new benchmark in 2021, a 25 percent increase from the previous year, according to an analysis from Connect K-12. However, nearly 28 million U.S. students attend schools where Internet speeds still do not meet the FCC guidelines.

In Ohio, 376 school districts have Internet speeds that do not meet the FCC guidelines, 47 of which are in the seven counties of Northeast Ohio.

The slowest Internet speed in the area is in Rootstown Local School District in Portage County, which has speeds of 0.17 Mbps for its 1,170 students. This also ties as the slowest
Internet speed in the state, matched with Bellaire Local Schools in Belmont County.

Chardon Local School District (0.19 Mbps for 2,883 students) in Geauga County, Elyria City School District (0.2 Mbps for 6,047 students) in Lorain County, and Stow-Munroe Falls City School District (0.21 Mbps for 5,593 students) in Summit County are among the top 10 school districts in the state for slowest Internet speeds.

Below is a list of school districts in Northeast Ohio with the slowest Internet speeds as of December 2022, along with the district’s current Internet service provider. Some readers may need to use this link to see the previous map or the following chart.

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