ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — The Rochester City School District is maintaining its efforts to ensure students are fully equipped with at-home internet as needed.

At the start of the pandemic RCSD provided students with hotspots so that they could engage in academics from home — and with kids back at school, according to Glen Vanderwater, Chief Technology Officer at RCSD, the at-home internet access hasn’t stopped.

“Right now if a student needs access to the internet, we provide them access through a mobile hotspot otherwise we are under the assumption that they have home connectivity,” Vanderwater said.

Vanderwater added that learning doesn’t end when the school day ends.

“It now stretches into the evenings. Students can engage through Google Classroom,” she added. “We’ve deployed close to 2,800 mobile hotspots for our students. We have about 550 remaining. That should easily get us to the end of this school year. As we look further down the road, we’ll continue to partner with AT&T’s 10 million project if we need more.”

Vanderwater believes there is a difference in urban and rural settings when it comes to access to at-home internet usage and hopes Monroe County Executive Adam Bello’s plans follow suit for the betterment of the entire area.