; Whereas the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) estimates that up to 95 percent of students attending BIE facilities lack residential internet services during the COVID–19 pandemic; Whereas the GAO has further found that FCC data has overstated statistics relating to broadband availability and digital access on Tribal lands in the United States; Whereas the 2017 statistics of the National Center for Education Statistics in the Department of Education showed that 34.1 percent of all higher education students engage in some form of online education courses, a 5.7-percent increase in enrollment in online higher education from the previous year; Whereas the percentage of students enrolled in online education courses significantly increased during the pandemic and educational administrators have made remote and online learning for the 2020–2021 academic year available to avoid public health risks; Whereas increased access to broadband promotes economic competition, entrepreneurship, and efficiency; Whereas the World Bank found that every 10 percent increase in fixed broadband penetration accelerates economic growth by 1.21 percent in developed economies and 1.38 percent in developing economies; Whereas counties with higher rates of broadband availability have lower unemployment rates, and broadband helps service industry businesses overcome geographic barriers that have traditionally hampered rural growth; Whereas the American Medical Informatics Association and other public health experts have called access to wireless broadband services a social determinant of health; Whereas data from the American Community Survey of the Bureau of the Census shows that approximately 5,000,000 households with school-age children do not have high-speed internet access at home, with a disproportionate share being low-income African-American or Hispanic/Latino households, and low-income households are 4 times more likely than middle- or high-income households to lack broadband access