Joe Fuller: In March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the economy, businesses pivoted to remote work, and schools quickly moved to online learning. School administrators in Hamilton County, Tennessee, which includes the city of Chattanooga, knew that to deliver education equitably, they needed to bridge the digital divide. To ensure that students could continue their studies, they partnered with the Electric Power Board (EPB)—the local nonprofit municipal utility—to expand access to broadband services. EdConnect—the collaboration between Hamilton County Schools, the Electric Power Board, and local community organizations—made it possible for students to stay online. This $8.2 million, 10-year program is going to reach 17,000 households and over 28,000 kids. Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast. I’m your host, Harvard Business School Professor and visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Joe Fuller. I’m joined by Dr. Bryan Johnson, the Hamilton County School superintendent, and Marcus Shaw, CEO of startup accelerator CO.LAB [The Company Lab] and an EPB board member. We’ll discuss the public-private partnership that emerged to support this transition to broadband learning and how the crisis response may lead to longer-lasting changes in Chattanooga. Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast, Marcus and Bryan.

Bryan Johnson: Thanks for having us.

Marcus Shaw: Thank you so much.

Fuller: So both of you are involved with the Hamilton County school system differently. Bryan, you’re the superintendent. Maybe you could give our listeners a little background and context about Hamilton County and the school system so we’ve got the stage set to discuss some of the developments down there.

Johnson: Absolutely. Well, thank you for having us. I’m Bryan Johnson. I have the privilege of serving as superintendent here, a school system of about 44,500 children in a county of over 300,000. A very diverse community, we have urban, suburban, and rural in our county. We cover a span of about 576 square miles. We’re about 45 percent white, 30 percent or so Black. And then the rest “other,” with our growing Hispanic population, the Latinx community approaching over 15 percent. And so, again, very, very diverse, which creates a unique context for us. We always say that when you look at school districts across the state and the 1 million students that the state of Tennessee serves, our community probably most closely aligns to the statewide demographics.

Fuller: Bryan, what’s the urban-rural mix like?

Johnson: So we have a unique mix. So we have about 12 or 13 schools that we serve in our urban core, so to speak. That’s about 9,000 or 10,000 students in that urban core. But we also have, on the other side of it, we have some rural poverty. And so we have about five schools that sit in rural areas that serve a few thousand students.

Fuller: So you really do have the whole gamut, all the way from a major metro down to rural school districts.

Johnson: Absolutely. And our geography is unique—we’re mountains and valleys. There’s some unique challenges and opportunities, for sure.

Fuller: So Marcus, tell us a little bit about what you do in the region, and also how you’re engaged with Bryan and the school district.

Shaw: Thanks, Joe. So I serve as the CEO of the Company Lab. We are the entrepreneurship center for Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the nine-county region surrounding Chattanooga. As the CEO of CO.LAB, we work with entrepreneurs to start companies to build and enhance their capability as entrepreneurs and as small businesses. In addition to that role, I also sit on the board of EPB—our local municipal utility—which, in addition to providing electricity to over 170,000 homes and businesses, is also the provider of broadband and telephony services.

Fuller: So one of the big challenges that everyone has observed is how hard it has been for a lot of school districts to make the transition to remote learning. You have asymmetries in terms of people’s familiarity with technology, their access to broadband connections, availability of devices to learn—big challenge for learners and teachers. And, of course, an impediment to everything from people staying employed to business formation, entrepreneurship. Let me turn first to you, Bryan. How has the school district responded? What lessons have you learned about what it takes to make the transition to more remote learning?

Johnson: Yeah, so Covid-19 has definitely really shined a light on some of what was underlying. I heard many people regularly talking about the need for broadband, Wi-Fi access for students and families. And as a result of Covid-19, those issues have become more pronounced. And what we’ve come to the realization of is that there is a long way to go. So our community has taken a giant step forward in regards to closing that digital divide. But what we also recognize and know and are working toward is the training and the supports that are necessary for students, teachers, leaders, and families. Frankly, as so many families have—were forced to, obviously, in the spring, and then have chosen to, as we stepped into fall—continued learning online, there continues to be challenges in regards to how to access content curriculum, what to use, how to be comfortable with it, and how really, ultimately, to maximize it to transform learning. And so we have really dug into training and support and trying to bring the community along in the conversation and really making sure that parents and families and students know that we want to support them in every way.

Fuller: One of the solutions that has been implemented in Chattanooga is a public-private partnership called EdConnect to help ensure that there is high-quality access for kids and learners to networks so they can take advantage of the online learning opportunities you’re providing. Marcus, could you talk a little bit about the evolution of EdConnect—what inspired it and how it all came together?

Shaw: EdConnect reflects a response to an opportunity for us to do something much bigger. As we came into the Covid era in mid-March—and Dr. Johnson and the school system did a Herculean job to get through the end of the school year—we started thinking about what education would look like for students as they were out of school. And really, it started off with the opportunity to try to provide some continuing education for students over the summer, for a small amount of students, maybe 5,000 students, to think about how you can help them make up some of that time that was lost as schools moved to remote—and we know that there were some gaps early on. But very quickly, we began to understand that there was an opportunity to do something pretty incredible and to think outside of the box and really think about a bigger solution. And so the public-private partnerships that you talked about—EPB with the school system, with some of the foundation and philanthropic communities here in Chattanooga, as well as some other nonprofit institutions and for-profit institutions—began to think about doing something incredibly ambitious, like getting Internet access to the students that need it most, the most vulnerable part of the population. And it was really out of that work that EdConnect was born.

Fuller: So, Marcus, did this get started specifically around Covid, or did the conversation predate the pandemic?

Shaw: The conversation definitely predates the pandemic. This asset came to Chattanooga in 2009. And just a little bit of the backstory: EPB—which is a municipal utility provider for Chattanooga, Hamilton County, and some of the other areas in the region—in 2009, with internal funds and some funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, launched what at the time was really the biggest modernization of an electric grid system in the country. And so that was done to enable smart devices, to create a more modern electrical smart grid. As we did that, we also rolled out broadband access, because we rolled fiber to every home and business that we served electricity to. I think for some of the most progressive people, there was a question of, “Well, how can we also use this to benefit the community?” And that was done through other programs, which enabled easier use for folks. But I think, certainly, in the Covid era, it became clear that we could do even more. And so we thought about ways to get that done, and EdConnect was born out of that ambition.

Fuller: And how did this all come together, Bryan, with you all and the leadership of the school system to take this offer of expanding access and bake it into what you were doing in terms of delivering services to the students?

Johnson: So I think as Marcus mentioned, we knew the resource and infrastructure was there. And going back to the spring—when we approached EPB and said, “We’re going to have to pivot to get completely online”—EPB stood up some access points throughout our community that students could gain access to Wi-Fi, really, and continue the learning. And what we recognized is that we really needed a long-term solution. And so, in partnership with the EPB and David Wade, their CEO, there was an openness and a receptivity to how we might really aggressively attack that. We also had the great benefit of having a very engaged community, philanthropic organizations, and a business community that’s committed to public education and has been for some time and really believes in the direction that we’re headed. And so it really took off from there. And Marcus played a key role serving on the board of EPB and being in those conversations and bringing together city and county government. We’re very fortunate to have the infrastructure, but then also to have the resources and support of the community in this way to pull this off for students.

Fuller: So listening to the two of you, this is a program that really involved multiple different players: local philanthropies, obviously the local electrical utility, county government, the school district—kind of a classic public-private partnership. So that phrase gets thrown around a lot in terms of the way to go about solving problems. You all have practical experience in building such a partnership to address a specific problem. What did it take? What did it take in terms of leadership? Who was convening these conversations? What did it take to build alignment across the various players?

Johnson: So every economically disadvantaged student—28,500 students, roughly, in 17,000 households—are going to receive broadband Wi-Fi access for the next decade. And so it was really important to us, in the midst of this conversation, not just to do something for the moment, but to do something that really was going to be transformative for the community. And I think that 17,000-household piece is important because, obviously, the student is our focus, but there’s also an economic driver there when you began to talk about the opportunity for parents and families to extend education and to go forward. And so, from a leadership construct, really, that’s what ultimately sits at the core of the conversation—is, your impacting households. And so, Marcus can probably speak to this better than I, but we spent a lot of time on Zoom calls among ourselves, with different entities, whether it was the city or county mayor. Obviously, I have a school board, and I give so much credit to our school board for having the vision, county commissioners, city council people. But you also have business and industry involved. So Blue Cross is a million-dollar contributor to this project. The Smart City Venture Fund, which is a group of philanthropic organizations that came together when these wheels were in motion four or five years ago to really, in essence, collaborate and bring resources together to really do impactful things versus one-off kinds of projects. And they were able to contribute $1 million or so, our city and county government each a $1.5 million. And so many conversations with these individual entities, and then collectively, around how we accelerate and really ultimately figure this out. And everybody had an openness and a receptivity. And there was a true commitment to, ultimately … you can always find reasons why you can’t do this, as I go back and think about the evolution of this project—from the end of May 2020 to announcing that we had the funds, we’re going to be able to pull this off, in like July of 2020. The conversations and the intentionality and commitment to resilience, really, that was there is, really, really inspirational and a testament to the community at large.

Fuller: Marcus, you’d be viewing this also through the lens of, as a business person. You have a consulting firm, you’re running CO.LAB. As you think back on this, how did it come together? And also, how did some of the history in the Chattanooga area of folks working together to advance the region’s competitiveness play into all this?

Shaw: Because of the nature of some of our publicly owned entities, as well as the character of some of our private-sector leaders, there’s a real focus—among all of the organizations that were part of this and many others—to advance economic and community development. And I think for a period, when we find ourselves in a crisis situation, the ability to bring those folks together is absolutely phenomenal. As Dr. Johnson said, not only is it a public-private partnership, but it’s also a bipartisan effort between the county and the city, where our mayors are focused on two different political parties. From an economic standpoint, I think one thing that really helped advance this was the dire situation that we found ourselves in when it became clear that Covid was pretty serious. And you start looking at, what’s the economic return that you have to get to make an investment worthwhile? And if you believe that children can benefit from broadband access, it doesn’t take a lot of kids being successful to make this return make economic sense, on top of the social impact that it has.

Fuller: Bryan, let’s let me come back to you. Of course, one of the initial challenges all school districts faced when they had to start going to remote learning was the one that you all have tackled through EdConnect—the inequality and access to technology and getting students the devices they need and then the connectivity they need. But there’ve been a host of other problems that school districts have faced, whether it’s how do you serve students that have free and reduced lunch or other dietary things? We’re seeing all sorts of issues in terms of behavioral health problems and depression among students and teachers. How have you been addressing those things, and how is the community rising to help you all tackle those hard problems?

Johnson: Yeah, so Covid really shined a light on how important schools are from the standpoint of providing for the whole child. And so—everything from meals to a social worker or case worker that may be supporting a child and a family—a lot of those resources happen, or a lot of those supports happen, at the school level. And so I give so much credit to our school nutrition team. I mean, between the middle of March through the summer, they served over 1.2 million meals. And we, in many cases, had to deliver those meals to the bus stops and making sure students had access and take it out into the community. They just did a phenomenal job, as did our bus drivers, in getting those students access. It’s impacted things from the standpoint of the whole child. I mean, I think one of the biggest things that struck me, as we’ve given choice and have probably 60 percent of our students that have returned to on-campus learning, one of the first things that struck me, as I was in a school building in August, was there was a Centerstone worker—Centerstone is a social-services provider—that was going to get a student out of a classroom and walking alongside the student. And it just hit me as we were in the challenge of trying to get school reopened—that particular student that was having that opportunity to get some support and that family to get some support from their case worker. I don’t know if that resource would have been readily available if we hadn’t tried to return. And so it really has shined a light on some of those things, and the way our community has responded to it has been phenomenal. We have about 35 percent of our population that have decided to stay at home, which we fully support this first semester. And what we quickly recognized is that, if there’s not a commitment from the student, the parent, et cetera, that the commitment to logging on and continuing to learn can be a challenge. And we currently have over 20—more like 30—what we’re calling “virtual learning centers.” And it’s our faith-based community and other service providers that are opening up their doors to take in 15, 20, 25 kids to help with providing that adult resource and support to keep students on track. And so that’s just an example of how engaged our community is. We also meet, our county mayor has established a children’s cabinet in the midst of Covid-19. We’re meeting on a weekly basis. And actually our children’s cabinet is through the Harvard Redesign Lab. Our mayor was on every call, and I was on every call. And all of our children’s service providers were on those calls. And so again, it’s just a testament to the work within the community and how they really rally around children.

Fuller: So the Redesign Lab is at our graduate school of education at Harvard, works with school districts on all sorts of innovative programs. Marcus, let me come back to you for a second. You’re deeply involved in economic development, business formation, in the region. All communities are now concerned about the economic impact of Covid, businesses closing, people are going on furlough or already being laid off. How are you working in terms of coming up with solutions to that, how to help folks get back on a track to gainful employment? And also, what’s the nature of the relationship with the school district in terms of trying to get people on a pathway to employability, both now and in more normal times?

Shaw: The first side is what we see through CO.LAB in entrepreneurship. Clearly, during this period of economic disruption, businesses have been impacted, and the ability for them to find a more resilient path has been something that we’ve been focused on as an organization, whether that’s through increased technical assistance; helping folks apply for PPP [the Paycheck Protection Program] and other relief packages available through the city, the county, or the state government, as well as the feds; having people build relationships and find other ways to find financial and social support to help their businesses continue to be resilient during this period. And also for some of those folks that found themselves out of jobs, we’re always interested in an entrepreneurial pursuit, opening up our doors and removing the barriers for education around entrepreneurial programming. The second part, and I think it will be a good segue for Dr. Johnson, the K–12 system and the community college system—Chat[tanooga] State in particular, with Dr. Rebecca Ashford—have done an incredible job of identifying what some of the future of work could look like in a post-Covid era with the adult population here. And finding that path between K–12 learning and the adult learning at the community college level has been something that not only creates potentially more entrepreneurs, but also an entrepreneurial way of thinking about education.

Fuller: Dr. Johnson, how do you view that question on how the school districts should be thinking for those kids in high school about getting them on a path to that will equip them for a decent job in the future? And what’s the role in terms of building their familiarity with technology in accomplishing that?

Johnson: Future readiness really involves two components: (a) making sure they have the technical expertise in whatever career field or area they desire to go into, but then also making sure that they have what so many people call the “soft skills”—I call them the “hard skills”—that are necessary in order to be successful. And so how important it is to be able to self-advocate, how important it is to understand the importance of being on time and doing things in a professional way. And so, to that tune, really about three years ago, we launched what we call “future-ready institutes.” And they are smaller learning-community schools-within-schools that are in our high schools that are built around career themes. We have over 20 of them across our high schools. This year, more than 50 percent of our [high school] students are in a future-ready institute. And, really, we use that career theme to integrate a core area, whether it be math, English, science, or social studies, and have them delve into real-world problems and really try to draw out that connection between the content area and what it is they’re interested in from a career context. And so we’ve got great partnerships—with everything from our community college to our employers to our four-year institutions. They really have done a lot of work around tightening up our career pathways and making sure that our students can access them and understand the entry and exit points for particular careers, the earning potential. And then we try to stay apprised and abreast. I’ll be actually going to a lineman training center and reviewing that for the potential of developing or getting our students access to that particular program that are interested in it. And so we play a key role—from everything from the technical standpoint to terminal degrees and everywhere in between, making sure the students understand the careers and opportunities that are there.

Fuller: Bryan, the one thing we’ve seen in the private sector, when they’ve experienced significant disruptions—let’s say the Great Recession, as an example—that even though they did a lot of things that were short-term, part of a crisis response, that they then set aside when a more robust economy returned. We’ve also seen that through those crises, they’ve learned some things, and they’ve changed their core processes to reflect that learning that was not planned. It was very unfortunate because it was related to a big crisis. But nonetheless, they took something positive from it. Could you just tell me a little bit what you anticipate the school district might take from this kind of grievous episode of Covid and might learn from this?

Johnson: Absolutely. Two things we talk about frequently are being a high-reliability organization and being a learning organization. And this Covid-19—although it has presented many challenges, which are well-documented—it has presented some significant opportunities. We talk about the modalities in which we deliver instruction. You will see an increased emphasis on making sure that we have content and curriculum available in the online platform. One of the major benefits of Covid-19 that we’ll see going forward is the comfort level that I think our teachers, students, leaders, even myself will have with how to leverage technology to enhance our work professionally, to enhance student learning. We have developed, as a result of Covid-19, what I believe will be a more resilient student, a more ready student for the future.

Fuller: Well, certainly one of the things we’re seeing across companies is that Covid is being a major spur for them to adopt digital technologies and automation at an even faster rate than they were in the past. It has really accelerated the underlining trends. Marcus, how do you see the longer term here, and what are your ambitions to continue to expand this pattern of different groups in the community working together to advance the Chattanooga region’s economic development?

Shaw: When you look at what needs to happen in terms of an impact on a single child’s life just in order to make this EdConnect program a tremendous ROI is pretty phenomenal and really highlights the power of broadband access for all children. As we look at that over the next 10 years, I expect that we’ll see some tremendous impact at the individual level, but also the community level. And I think that type of outlook should encourage people, not only in Chattanooga, but in communities across the world like Chattanooga, to find ways to bridge some of those gaps that exist between us and really work together for the benefit of economic development.

Fuller: Well, let’s just talk a little bit about how big an initiative EdConnect is. Marcus, what are some of the key figures here? Is this a major undertaking?

Shaw: So to provide a frame of reference, the EdConnect project is targeted to impact up to 28,500 students and representing over 17,000 households. And so the projected cost upfront was $8.2 million. And we’ve raised about $7.5 million against that projected need today. So that $8.2 million is the front-end cost. And then there are some ongoing costs, which is supported by partners in the consortium as well. But most of that cost is going for hardware costs. So we’re talking, [optical network terminals] ONTs, we’re talking Wi-Fi routers inside the homes, and also the connectivity—turning up the line between EPB and the home.

Fuller: So that’s just a physical activation of a connection between the premise and the network. And how long is this going to last?

Shaw: So this is a 10-year project.

Fuller: And so that $8.2 million anticipates continuing the project for a decade?

Shaw: That’s right. And there are some ongoing costs to continue supporting the program, but by being able to take care of a large portion of that cost up front, it has really enabled us to take a big swing at the ball.

Fuller: I mean, if you just start thinking about it on a cost-per-student-per-year basis, it seems like an inconsequential number for a program that could have a very, very significant impact. So what kind of feedback are you getting from the beneficiaries of EdConnect? Maybe, Dr. Johnson, let me ask you that.

Johnson: Well, we’re in the very early stages of it. I mean, we launched it in August, and EPB has been feverishly at work going into or outside of homes and establishing and setting it up. But so far, the feedback has been just overwhelmingly positive. There are so many families that are grateful to have access, and for that to be one less thing to worry about. Again, Covid-19 is—even though it seems like we’ve been in it forever, and some days it feels like we’ll never come out of it—Covid-19 is a moment in time. What we’re talking about is something that really resets systems and structures and processes. And because of the approach that our community was able to take, because of the infrastructure at EPB and the partnerships, this will go well beyond Covid-19. And we’ll see students and families have access to what they should have access to. There’s so much conversation now about broadband and Wi-Fi being almost like a utility; it’s almost like water and lights. You almost have to have it at this stage, and I’m just very proud to be in a community that sees the value—and doesn’t just see the value, but ultimately puts the money where the mouth is, or where the belief is. And so we’re very fortunate in that regard.

Fuller: It does seem that this is an illustration of not letting a good crisis go to waste, that it really could have some good long-term benefits that’s derived from the necessity of giving kids equitable access to educational resources in this troubling time.

Johnson: It just is an opportunity that’s been created, that’s really been here at our fingertips for some time that we have just absolutely, collectively as a community, just taken full advantage of in this moment in time.

Fuller: Marcus Shaw, Dr. Bryan Johnson, thanks so much for joining us on the Managing the Future of Work podcast.

Johnson: Thank you for having us.

Shaw: Thank you.

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