Wi-Fi hotspots offered for students at EMEPA and school parking lots

MERIDIAN, Miss. (WTOK) - The Lauderdale County School District is helping students who need better access to the internet by providing Wi-Fi in each school’s parking lot. School officials say that the gap in internet access around the county was one of the largest hurdles to overcome when planning the re-opening of schools.

“One of the first things we thought that we could do to help kind of bridge that gap was to provide internet access outside of our buildings to those students that can’t attend normal classes in-person and maybe they need to have access to it after-hours," said Trent Airhart, the director of technology for LCSD. "So we are utilizing our current internet from the schools and providing it in the parking lot.”

With the East Mississippi Electric Power Association going through a 5-year broadband project, EMEPA and the school district are working together to achieve better access to the internet.

“They are also partnering with us to provide additional Wi-Fi coverage both at their office locations and we’re looking at maybe expanding the Wi-Fi coverage at our schools in the outside areas as well through some equipment provided by EMEPA,” Airhart explained.

EMEPA is providing the parking lot hotspots at the Highway 39 office in Meridian, and the offices in Quitman, De Kalb, and Louisville. EMEPA is also providing log-in information for all of the public schools in its other districts.

“We have been working on the broadband project really since January of 2019, that’s when we first started studying it and then of course with the pandemic, it just really pushed everything into overdrive and highlighted the need for high speed internet access very quickly in our area,” said Julie Boles, the director of marketing and communications for EMEMPA.

You can get the log-in information by calling the main office of the school that your child attends.

Copyright 2020 WTOK. All rights reserved.