Limited or no internet access is a painful reality for some students in Cleveland

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Mallory Wilks is from a local organization called the EYEJ group.

She spoke passionately about the importance of internet service for public school students in Cleveland.

Imagine this, as 19 news has reported, nearly 40 percent of households in Cleveland don’t have internet at home.

This as we head into another school year, which will begin with remote learning.

“Oh why don’t you just google it? it’s really important especially now in this time that internet is a necessity. Cuyahoga County declared it as a utility in 2015,” she said.

This afternoon’s so-called phone zap event was aimed at alerting the people in charge about the ongoing problem of internet access.

Organizer Sriram Satyavolu from EYEJ told me children need much more to succeed.

“That includes tablets or something that they can use to go on to online classes or zoom calls, like these or in general just to make sure they are connected to classmates for any questions they might have,” he said.

Satyavolu said the numbers are alarming.

“Specifically, in Cuyahoga County, 1 in 4 households has no access to internet including smart phone access,” he said.

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