LAURINBURG —There are 130 families in the county that don’t have internet and, on Monday, the Scotland County Board of Education heard what was being done for them.

“I was able to do some work and get some legwork done,” said Chief Technology Officer Rick DeLaunay. “I was able to reach out to 106 of the actual addresses. So overall numbers 47% of the 130 families internet is just not available at their address. No broadband, no wifi of any kind including cell service they just don’t have it in the middle of some of these very rural areas.”

DeLaunay added he was unable to find anyone to service those areas as well but some do have an option for them.

“Thirty-nine-percent already had Spectrum services at their house,’ DeLauny said. “Now what that doesn’t tell me is what kind of service so they either have telephone, TV, internet or some kind of combination thereof … the cable is in their home and paying for that or subsidizing that is a lot easier because they already have the cable in their home.”

There are 14% that don’t have Spectrum but broadband services are available and all of the services have various plans for the area.

“Our first one is obviously the 47% that’s our highest percent and there’s just nothing out there,” DeLauny said. “From a technology standpoint, I’m all ears. I don’t know what to do for them. I talked to Spectrum and they won’t even run the cables to those addresses unless you pay for that fee and that’s very expensive.”

Board Chair Carolyn Banks suggested that for students that didn’t have access at all if they would be able to come back full time since there wouldn’t be that many of them.

“Now that we know the barriers I think there are some things that we can explore,” said Superintendent Takeda LeGrand. “For students who do not have access maybe write that letter to Spectrum and see what it would cost for them to provide that resource and working with other businesses to see what support they might be able to offer.”

LeGrand did add they would get more information and try to come with options for the students who were without to bring back to the board.

Reach Katelin Gandee at [email protected]. To support The Laurinburg Exchange, subscribe here: https://www.laurinburgexchange.com/subscribe.