Two years of COVID-19 unleashed a worldwide pandemic that was unthinkable until it hit — and brought a host of hard lessons that radically changed how we live.

Among these: adapting to distance learning, which became the mode of education across Hawaii, the nation and beyond. What it also exposed, even more sharply than previously known, was the depth of the disturbing digital divide between the haves and have-nots.

That’s why it is imperative that every dollar of the $71,520,353 in federal COVID-19 assistance money just awarded to Hawaii public schools must go toward closing the digital inequity gap faced by students who can’t readily connect via home internet, plus other student-learning supports.

“Schools may have had Chromebooks to loan, but not all families had internet access, or perhaps were sharing one cell phone hotspot with multiple people in the home,” David Miyashiro, executive director of the nonprofit Hawaii KidsCAN, has said. “And when people are losing jobs, internet becomes a luxury.”

The $72.5 million is from the Federal Communications Commission’s Emergency Connectivity Fund Program, part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed by Congress in March 2021. The funds will buy laptop and tablet computers, Wi-Fi hot spots, routers and broadband connectivity for use by students and school staffers.

During the pandemic, Hawaii KidsCAN saw the urgent need for reliable Wi-Fi in hard-to-service spots — so, with sponsors, spearheaded “WI-FI on Wheels,” a program using buses and vans to provide free mobile Wi-Fi from about 11 sites on four islands. Usually setting up on weekdays when nearby schools were in session, this proved invaluable in helping hundreds of students keep up.

More than 20% of Hawaii’s public school students could not get online from home at the height of distance learning in 2020 and 2021, according to state Department of Education statistics.

“In some cases, broadband didn’t reach into their neighborhoods,” U.S. Rep. Ed Case told the Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” webcast recently. “In some cases it was that students didn’t have sufficient tools in the home. In some cases they had the tools in the home, but those tools had five or six people who all were competing for computer time every day. … These students were literally struggling on remote learning, or they weren’t learning at all.”

This discouraging situation must be rectified as much as possible, as quickly as possible. The federal funding infusion presents a unique opportunity that cannot be wasted. Further, Hawaii’s broadband network will get another boost, thanks to a separate $1.2 trillion infrastructure package: At least $100 million will be coming here, plus possibly more via competitive grants. With so many rural spots in need of access, Hawaii entities must be aggressive in pursuing those grants.

At the Legislature, Senate Bill 2184 proposes to create a digital learning center within the state Department of Education to improve, among other things, delivery of digital learning services throughout the school system, and provide resources to help students improve digital literacy skills. The proposal calls for funds to staff and administer the center.

That intent to boost digital education should be supported, of course, to help students and staffers become tech-savvy, and to have the equipment to do so. But as Hawaii KidsCAN has shown, it’s all about the swift delivery of tech and services to boost education — and the priority is to be adept and nimble, not to grow sluggish bureaucracy.

Bottom-line lesson, though: All this momentum bodes well for connectivity — for all of Hawaii’s people, not just for those who can afford to digitally engage. Internet connectivity is a basic part of today’s world — for education, certainly, but also for essential skills to enable telework and telehealth. Everything must be put in place now to make sure everyone has access to the technology, and to overall success in life.

Burt Lum is the broadband strategy officer for the Hawaii Broadband & Digital Equity Office.