With our County Health Officer recommending a remote start for schools, having real broadband solutions is more important now than ever. After all, many of our students, teachers, and other staff remain poorly or unconnected going into the fall because of our lack of real broadband infrastructure. At the end of the day nothing is more reliable, efficient, eco-friendly, cost-effective, and helps us address most of our social and economic concerns like fiber. This has become painfully clear during the pandemic. So now would be a good time for the schools, and families with school children, to demand fiber to the home. FIber is so much better than any other solution its hard for some to even imagine how much better it is than other broadband solutions, but here are some highlights. In the book "Fiber" by Susan Crawford, she talks about how students, even those on free low-income fiber connections, in Chatanooga can view HD microscope slides at far away Universities or use robots to allow sick children in the local hospital to still be part of the class. Please keep in mind that, "The data rates in fiber optics are high with minimal propagation delays. Data rates in satellite communications are much lower. The large distance from the earth to the satellites introduces inadvertent delays in transfer." This is true of Wireless and Copper-Last mile connections, like Comcast, too. None of them stand up to fiber, no matter what their supporters say. For a more in-depth overview please see this month's Whatcom Watch article on comparing connection types. https://whatcomwatch.org/index.php/article/untangling-the-wires-understanding-tech-recognizing-fiber/ In short, it's time to tell our officials that it's time to stop screwing around and protecting big telecom and start putting in public fiber already. We need it now more than ever. We'd love to start the school year with reliable, inexpensive, connections that make real-time classroom communications possible along with telemedicine, better telecommuting, and more.  Also, the schools are taking an additional $169.9 million in taxes for technology over the next 4 years. It seems to me that Greg Baker, and the schools, should consider spending some of that on fiber. After all, what good is it to hand out lots of shiny new laptops to kids that don't have good broadband connections?