Tribal broadband project to steady school internet; district, tribe agree on short-term fixes and coordination

Todd County School District 66-1 and tribal broadband staff met in an informational session to review internet and phone connections for the district’s new school building, discuss persistent outages on the temporary wireless link, and outline a timeline for bringing fiber to the site.

The discussion centered on reliability problems with a point‑to‑point wireless link that has been carrying internet and IP phone traffic to the new school since construction. Mark Baez, a community member who attended the meeting, asked, “where we're at with the Internet stuff for the school and when that was gonna open,” prompting detailed technical and schedule updates from district IT staff and tribal broadband representatives.

A tribal representative said the tribe’s broadband grant is on final notice and that a public comment period will close in about three weeks; the representative said a groundbreaking would follow roughly one to two weeks after that and estimated the fiber installation to “take us about 10 days” for the immediate route once contractors are mobilized. The same speaker said the tribe expects the overall fiber buildout to be completed in months rather than years and that rights-of-way and environmental clearances are already in place.

Why it matters: the new school is not yet turned over for occupancy and several…