What happens when Google put WiFi on a bus? Kids have time to get work done

Most mornings, it’s still dark outside when Velvet Engle and her friends who ride bus No. 784 begin their hour and a half bus ride to school from rural southwest Montgomery County.

Some kids sleep. Others talk. Still others log onto their laptops to work on school assignments while the bus barrels down narrow back roads, jostling students about until the next stop.

This bus and five others are part of a pilot program called a Rolling Study Hall paid for by Google. The buses were equipped with WiFi technology, which allows students to do homework during their long rides to and from rural areas.

Long rides, rural areas

The program is part of a community commitment by Google, which is building a $600 million data center in Montgomery County.

Buses for New Providence Middle and Northwest High schools were chosen because they cover the rural Woodlawn area, where several bus routes take more than 45 minutes to complete.

“I can get a lot of my work done on the bus,” said Velvet, a Northwest sophomore who boards the bus at 6 a.m. each day with her sister, Tiara Lilley, a sixth-grader at New Providence Middle. “It gives me more time at home to do other things.”

Velvet and Tiara’s dad, Warren Engle, agrees.

“It’s been pretty helpful, actually, because they get home and there’s an awful lot less stuff they have to worry about getting done,” he said. “It gives me a chance to get them out in the yard and working with some of the farm life and things we’ve got going on right now.”

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More time at home

And though the program only started last month, Engle has already seen a difference. 

“We’ve already seen vast improvements in their grades,” he said. “The younger daughter, Tiara — her grades have come up greatly.”

Velvet is looking toward college and wants to be veterinarian, he said.

“Anything she can do that gets her more time with the animal life that we’ve got around, she's all sorts of happy with that,” Engle said, adding that Tiara is also considering veterinary medicine or teaching.

Other students, like Addison Bailey, agreed the Rolling Study Hall frees up more time at home.

“I love it,” she said. “I don’t really get much done when I get home. This really helps.”

Bryan Bailey knows his daughter is being honest in her assessment, “Because once she gets home, it’s kind of hard to get her to do anything but be on her phone. So I think it’s great.”

And for Addison, a seventh-grader at New Providence, the ride home is even longer than the morning trip to school, because of safety guidelines about unloading near a curve.

“It’s kind of crazy for my daughter because when she’s coming home, they go past our house and she’s on the bus for another 20 or 30 minutes before they’re coming back the other way to drop her off," Bailey said.

“I can’t imagine how it makes her feel every day passing the house knowing she’s got to be on the bus another 30 minutes. But it’s good, obviously, that they can utilize that wasted time to do some homework or study.”

Digital divide 

In some rural parts of Montgomery County, having residential internet access can be a challenge, and sometimes expensive, especially in areas where cell phone service is spotty because many internet alternatives are cellular based.

“Sometimes it’s really slow (at home) because so many people are using it at one time,” said Roxana Escalera. She said that makes it difficult to complete her homework.

Only two students who ride bus No. 784 don’t have internet access at home.

Providing what amounts to a rolling WiFi hot spot for students augments Clarksville-Montgomery County School System’s One to One program, which provides laptops to all high school and middle school students.

High school students take their laptops home, but middle-schoolers must leave theirs at school. However, New Providence students participating in the pilot program are now permitted to leave school with their laptops.

Teacher ride-along

Another key part of the program is a teacher, paid through a stipend from Google, who rides each bus to help answer students' questions.

Sherry Hursh, a sixth-grade science teacher at New Providence, said she hasn’t fielded many academic questions so far. Primarily, she has helped when students had problems getting logged in.

Since the school year is nearly complete, Hursh said teachers plan during the summer to develop specialized assignments for students riding the study hall buses; with topics like voting or anti-bullying for the younger students.

Officials said that early on some adjustments had to be made with the equipment to stop kids from watching videos instead of doing school work, but overall there have been no problems.

Two key factors to be considered during the pilot program, which runs through the next school year, are whether test scores improve and if disciplinary actions on buses decline. No decisions have been made by the school system or Google beyond the end of the pilot program.

Lawanna Bowers, who has driven school buses for 44 years, said the Rolling Study Hall has helped keep the kids in line.

“When they have a ride that long, they run out of things to do,” she said. “So, they find little things to do like throwing paper and talking loud or smacking at each other. But now, they stay focused on their WiFi, so that gives me a chance to stay focused on driving.”

Mark Hicks can be reached at 931-212-7626 or on Twitter: @markhicksleaf.