In the 1980s, it seemed like every exciting TV show had to send a car sailing through the air.

You know the ones I mean: Knight Rider, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Fall Guy and many, many more. Sooner or later, the hero would be driving like mad, trying to escape a hot pursuit. And every single time, they’d reach a gap in the road, gun the engine and leap triumphantly across.

The pursuers? If they didn’t stop short, they’d try the same leap, fail and crash. That’s the nature of gaps. Not everyone can cross them.

That makes great TV. But it’s not so great in the digital world.

That’s why NextLight and the St. Vrain Valley Schools are excited to be building a bridge. 

St. Vrain recently announced that it had received a $1.3 million grant from the state for improving student internet access. We’ll be partnering with the school district to make that happen, so that no one has to try to jump the “digital divide” – especially at a time when reliable high-speed broadband access is vital to education.

That means we’re expanding our fiber footprint to reach more families in more areas.

It means we’ll be deploying and reinforcing a wireless solution, so that students who live in places that haven’t signed a NextLight access agreement – or who don’t have a stable address at all – can continue to get the connection they need.

And it also means that we’re able to increase the funding to Sharing the NextLight, which allows income-qualifying Longmont families with St. Vrain students to get a NextLight fiber connection for free. (That’s in addition to the support that already comes every month from local customers donating through their monthly NextLight bills, which we’re still thrilled to see … thank you and keep it up!)

Between opportunities like this and the caring actions of the Longmont community, we can take a lot of those gaps out of the road. And that’s exciting.

Because the only pursuit our students should have to think about is their own pursuit of learning.

And that’s a chase where we’ll gladly send them higher every single time.