BETHEL — As the coronavirus pandemic forced an overnight shift to remote learning, schools in western Maine suddenly faced a new challenge: How to deliver educational services to students with no home internet access.

In response, Maine West, a coalition of local and regional groups, is providing mobile hotspots to help students in the Oxford Hills, the Bethel area and the Rumford and River Valley areas to connect to online learning services.

“Schools have always called this the ‘homework gap’,” said Mike Wilson, senior program director of the Northern Forest Center and coordinator of the Maine West coalition. “Lack of home internet connection keeps too many students from connecting with teachers, conducting research and completing assignments. For many students and families, the sudden COVID-19 school closures expanded the homework gap into a canyon.”

The Maine West partnership began working in March to secure and distribute mobile hotspot devices that turn cellular phone signals into home wireless internet connections. With leadership by the Center and Community Concepts Finance Corp., Maine West is now providing 200 mobile hotspots to enable students in the Oxford Hills (SAD 17), Bethel area (SAD 44), and the Rumford and River Valley areas (RSU 10 and 56) to make the connection to the internet and online school services.

“The support from Maine West to provide these mobile hotspots for some of our families has greatly enhanced our ability to connect to all students during these challenging times,” said David Murphy, SAD 44 superintendent of schools.  “We were thrilled to receive these devices in a such timely fashion and to be able to provide additional remote learning support for the families and students who needed it the most.”

Within three weeks of the school shut-downs, Maine West raised more than $10,000 and built a partnership with the Maine-based National Digital Equity Center to provide area schools with mobile hotspots through the end of the school year. Project funding was provided by the Betterment Fund, the Northern Forest Center and The River Fund Maine.

In addition to serving kindergarten through grade 12 schools, the Maine West hotspot initiative is supporting nontraditional learners such as Alana Bracket through adult education programs and the University College Centers in Rumford and South Paris.

Bracket, recipient of the Osher New Beginnings Scholarship, is a first-time college student at the University College Center in South Paris. She said she would not have been to complete her first college course this spring without the mobile hotspot provided by Maine West.