COVID-19 revealed an inequity in digital access to learning for many Kalamazoo Public Schools' students and their families. The school district was able to provide chromebooks to all students in Spring 2020, however, the digital divide quickly became evident for those students who lacked internet access and the ability to connect. An answer had to be developed quickly in time for school year 2020-2021, and the only way for that to happen was through community-wide efforts.

KPS, The Foundation for Excellence, the Kalamazoo Promise and the Kalamazoo Community Foundation teamed up to fund the purchase of 1,000 hotspots. The library coordinated the ordering, processing and cataloging of each device. The already existing OneCard partnership between KPS and KPL, where every student's ID card also doubles as a library card, made the distribution of hotspots an easy task. The library circulated each hotspot to school-identified students for a period matching the full school year.

This project is recognized as a first phase in working toward a long-term solution in bridging the digital divide in Kalamazoo. The quick funding and coordinated work by the library and its partners helped mitigate an immediate problem for the new school year, yet a permanent fix for better access to broadband for all is the next hurdle. If we intend to learn digitally, then we must all work towards solving the broadband problem.