Sparklight® Works to Close Digital Divide for Missouri Students Through Chromebook Donation

Teenage girl lying on the floor in the living room doing her homework using a laptop computer, low angle, close up

As K-12 schools end another challenging year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sparklight is working to close the digital divide for students at Lake Road Elementary School in Poplar Bluff, Missouri with the donation of Chromebooks through the company’s Chromebooks for Kids initiative.

Sparklight Senior Vice President of Technology Services Ken Johnson said that both educators and students need access to the tools and technology that will set them up for future success.

“Now more than ever, student access to computers is a necessity,” Johnson said. “By donating Chromebooks, we’re giving students in need the opportunity to use technology that will ultimately prepare them for a progressively digital workforce.”

Lake Road Elementary School Principal Rondi Vaughn said that Sparklight’s Chromebook donation will help get the school one step closer to its vision of having a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) classroom in which students can access computers to conduct their STEM lessons.

Computers are an integral component of our students’ learning. This donation allows us to also have an outdoor classroom to continue our STEM activities outside,” Vaughn said.Having these computers in a cart for this purpose will allow us to give students the accessibility to technology while participating in these STEM classrooms.”

Over the past eight years, Sparklight has donated more than 2,000 Chromebooks to Title I schools in the markets it serves.

For more information about Sparklight’s Chromebook for Kids initiative and its other corporate social responsibility efforts, please visit www.sparklight.com/about/social-responsibility.