Cuba school officials apply creativity, persistence — and Elon Musk’s internet tech — to overcome connectivity hurdles in a rugged region

Editor’s Note: This is one article in a series examining how Cuba Independent School District overcame a significant digital divide.

A look at the Cuba Independent School District

• Located in northwest New Mexico

• Covers 120 square miles of rugged, remote terrain

• Serves village of Cuba and 3 communities within the Navajo Nation

• 750 students attend the district’s three schools

• 76% of students are Native American

• 20% of students are Hispanic

• 100% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch

• Only 2% of students had the internet at the start of COVID-19 pandemic

• All students needed internet to attend classes virtually during a state-mandated lockdown

Sources: CISD, U.S. Census Bureau

CUBA, N.M. — When Kendra Joseph was trekking across New Mexico in the summer of 2017, the last thing on her mind was Elon Musk. She certainly wasn't contemplating how to help impoverished students in this remote region north of Albuquerque get connected to high-speed internet.

But a chance encounter that year would place her on that surprising path, one that culminated in a trailblazing project to tackle a longstanding digital divide faced by Native American and Hispanic families across the region. While not without its challenges, the technology holds promise for students across remote regions of New Mexico, including farther south, and for other infrastructure-sparse locales across the globe. 

An avid hiker, Joseph was making good time along the Continental Divide Trail, a 3,000-mile journey from the Mexican border to Canada that covers the entire north-south span of New Mexico.

But on Day 16, her traveling companion, a 90-pound dog named Moose, began to falter in the heat.

“A big chunk in New Mexico is all desert and he refused to wear boots, so he ended up burning his paws,” she recalled. “He refused to walk. ”

Familiar to experienced trail walkers like Joseph are the people along national scenic trails – trail angels, as hikers call them – who volunteer help for troubled trekkers with water, places to sleep and shower, and other kindnesses.

Through a trail Facebook page, Joseph contacted a trail angel in Cuba, New Mexico, Crystal Trujillo, who sent her husband out to retrieve Joseph and her ailing dog. The distressed pair was brought to the couple’s home for recovery.

The friendship that began there led to regular Facebook postings, and then, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, to an effort that successfully brought Starlink — the satellite technology designed by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk — into the homes of New Mexico’s most at-risk Navajo and Hispanic students who had no internet for at-home schooling.

“I really had no idea that Starlink would be in the works, or what I had done to instigate anything,” Trujillo told SNMJC.

District achieves digital turn-around

This chance encounter would lead to a business networking opportunity with Starlink. That in turn was married with plenty of creativity and sheer determination on the part of Cuba Independent School District officials. Fueled as well by an influx of federal pandemic relief funds, the final result was that they overcame a longstanding digital divide facing the most at-risk school district — and students — in the state. Digitally disconnected students tend to lag behind their better connected peers academically, experts say. And this divide can have implications for their academic and future career prospects.

Unknown to Trujillo and Joseph at the pandemic’s outset is that the leadership of the Navajo Nation around Cuba was in high gear trying to figure out ways to bring the internet to its historically impoverished community, which was at the brink of being left further behind by the COVID-19 shutdown and a lack of access to the cyberworld — the most potent tool for keeping pace with the new realities of pandemic life.

Mario P. Atencio, vice president of the local Navajo Nation government, was keenly aware of how critical access to high-speed internet would be for his tribe, many of whom lived in homes out in distant hills with no electrical power.

Early in the pandemic, he read about another Native American group, the Hoh Tribe in western Washington, that was using a new satellite technology – from the company Starlink – that he understood to be faster and more reliable for rural areas than other options. Atencio called the tribe to learn more.

“One of the main leaders of the tribe at the time, he answered the phone because he's the only guy there answering the phones. I called him and he goes, ‘Man, it's moved us into the 21st Century,’” recalled Atencio. “He was gushing over it, really.”

‘Pay-it-forward moment’ connects officials to company

The Hoh Tribe in Forks, Washington is a small community comprising about 180 people, most living on the 1-square-mile reservation. It was among the first in the nation to participate in a Starlink beta study.

Melvinjohn Ashue, a former Hoh tribal council member and economic development director who oversaw the Starlink installations for his tribe in September 2020, said the technology is “one of the best investments the tribe has done, bringing in internet to the community, especially during lockdown.

“They let me set up the first one. Within five minutes, we had super-fast speeds. It was pretty amazing,” he said. 

After speaking with the Hoh Tribe, Atencio said he was excited about the potential of Starlink to help his tribe in New Mexico, and he set out to contact the company. 

“But we couldn't find any way to go talk to anybody from Starlink. They were a really hard connection to find back then,” he said. 

Atencio resigned himself to “just put it aside” and focus on trying to build more traditional fiber-optic internet, despite the long and complicated process that undoubtedly would await him due to the region’s rural, mountainous terrain, and the tribe’s complex permitting processes.

Meanwhile, the dialogue between Trujillo and Joseph had been continuing on Facebook. When Trujillo posted about the hardships of COVID-19 on the students in the area, Joseph saw it and said she felt it was “definitely a pay-it-forward moment” for her trail angel in Cuba. 

Joseph, it turns out, was a solar-power consultant, and she had connections in the technology industry. She asked Trujillo how she might be able to help the Cuba area, and Trujillo connected her with Atencio.

“She called me up and said she had found someone in Starlink. She found them, I don’t know how she did that, but then we started having discussion with SpaceX,” the owners of Starlink in April 2020, Atencio said.

Starlink pilots project in Torreon, N.M.

Soon, Starlink officials came to the library in the Navajo community of Torreon, about 30 miles southwest of Cuba, to install equipment and run tests of the satellite internet signal.

Atencio remembers first witnessing the new technology and realizing right away that “it was a completely different magnitude of internet speed” for the rural Navajo region.

“Just to watch, and to pull up a 4K video on Apple TV, and watch it nearly load instantaneously, it just was mind-blowing,” Atencio recalled. “But back then, we weren't really allowed to announce that the library had it.”

But rumors then began spreading about the library in the Navajo Torreon center having new satellite technology that was faster than standard satellite internet. Of great interest to the residents was that it could be installed without the need for any permits, a process that can be time-consuming because of tribal land regulations. Starlink’s signal beams from space, and, to pick up the signal, only limited equipment is needed at a home. And that signal can easily reach rurally located homes that aren’t within reach of other internet infrastructure.

Starlink checked many boxes. And the tribe needed solutions immediately.

When word started spreading about the fast internet signal at the library, vehicles began appearing in the parking lot at all hours of the day and night, remembers Cecelia Toledo, the account maintenance specialist for the Torreon chapter house – the equivalent of a tribal community center – which housed the library. 

“Oh yeah, people would drive up, people from around the community, to come use it,” she said. 

Soon, the Navajo Nation and CISD were communicating about the new internet technology.

In December of 2021, the Navajo Nation Council announced that CISD would be investing $1.2 million into the new satellite internet technology, Starlink. 

Homes in Cuba district also lacked electricity

The 750-student district covers 120 square miles and has three schools — Cuba Elementary, Cuba Middle School, and Cuba High. 

Several at-risk communities comprise the district — the village of Cuba and three Navajo communities of Counselor, Ojo Encino and Torreon. In addition, students were scattered in homes across the sprawling, rugged hills beyond these towns.

To help address a problem of about 60 homes lacking electricity, the district secured funding, about $20,000 through the state education department and a grant from the Navajo Nation, to install solar panels on about half of those homes. 

With solar power provided to some of the homes lacking electricity – the Cuba school district tech team still had to tackle the primary problem: getting students online amid the pandemic.  The district still had its sights set on Starlink. 

Early in the pandemic, Starlink did not have enough satellites to cover the Cuba area, said Edgar San Juan, technology integration specialist at CISD. But once the company’s New Mexico satellites became operational, and the new technology was brought into the area in December 2021, the long process began of equipping rural homes.

The first step for a school district to hookup Starlink was to provide addresses — and GPS coordinates — for the homes in need of satellite internet. But in rural areas around Cuba, it wasn’t a simple task.

“Out in the Navajo Nation, they don't use addresses like we do, so it's different out here,” San Juan said.

An example of directions to a student’s home might be to drive five miles north and “turn right at a white, tire house with a blue roof,” said Raphaelita Phillips, the director of Indian Education & Federal Programs for the school district.

CISD officials rode school buses with district drivers on their rural routes to create a database of homes.

Once the homes were identified, their locations were logged into an Excel spreadsheet and sent to Starlink, which used  the data to determine where to beam their internet signals. Then, the company mailed receiver equipment to those homes.

Farm animals posed a challenge to equipment

An added layer of complexity to providing satellite internet to the Navajo region is the rural nature of their homes, which is often problematic for sensitive satellite equipment, said Chavez.

“So Starlink sends out the unit, and it has only a tripod, and most of these homes have goats, dogs, horses, cows, livestock, and they are roaming around the house and that would never work,” he said. “The horse would step on the dish right away, or the goats will try to eat it, whatever. So we invested in buying poles.”

CISD students then prepared the poles, cutting them to size and drilling the required pilot holes to hold the satellite. Chavez said the district’s tech department led the effort, and residents often helped with the installation. This left little within reach of farm animals.

“Then we would go out and we'd dig the holes in the yards, mount the equipment, and dig a trench and bring the wiring into the house,” said Chavez. 

In about one year, the district has equipped more than 450 homes, Chavez said.

The speeds of the Starlink satellite internet, Chavez said, are beating expectations: about 120 Megabits per second download speed, and 25 Mbps upload speed. These qualify as “high-speed” by a basic federal definition.

“For around here, that is really good and it is enough to run classes via Zoom and anything else they might need to do online,” he said.

Residents weigh in on Starlink

The Cuba district has 451 Starlink subscriptions, officials said, and an additional 35 have been ordered.

The Torreon Navajo community is about a 25-mile drive from Cuba, following the winding road of N.M. Highway 197 out to scattered plots of land amid a vast expanse of rocky slopes. Here, simple homes stand surrounded by barking dogs and piles of firewood. And for those with Starlink, an 8-foot pole is buried two feet into the ground somewhere in the yard, with a clean white obelisk — the Starlink receiver — mounted on top to catch the internet signal. 

During a tour, Chavez walked up to a home served by the technology and pointed to dark gray, flat solar panels, about 2 feet by 2.5-feet wide, mounted on the roof. 

“These panels are what is running a battery system in there so they can power up Starlink and run the internet," he said, standing on ground covered by recent snowfall. "We brought them one of these units, but a horse kicked it and shattered it, or a cow stepped on it, or something, so we brought two more.”

‘It would freeze’

About ten miles further into the hills lives Carl Kaye, the father of two Cuba ISD students, one in elementary and the other in high school. His was the first Navajo home to receive a Starlink hookup through the district. He’s had it about a year with “no problems.

“We had internet before, but it was too slow. It would freeze,” said Kaye, as he stood near the satellite perched on a pole, the hand-dug trench still visible leading from the unit into the modem inside the home.

More than 20 miles from the central area of Torreon, Pierce Lewis lives with his grandfather and his two younger brothers, a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old, both of whom attend the Cuba district. Lewis’ parents died, and he cares for his brothers. Starlink has helped them stay on-track in school, and their access to it wouldn’t be possible if the district wasn’t footing the bill, according to the family.

Even beyond the pandemic shutdown,  regular storms often keep students home-bound, so Starlink is needed regardless of COVID-19, said Marilyn Sandoval, Lewis’ aunt.

“Last week they had virtual all week because of the snow and the mud, so they were here, on their laptops,” she said in mid-February.

Latoya Castillo, a Navajo tribal member who lives with her four children near border of the Jicarilla Apache Reservation, stood in front of her house, next to loose cinder blocks that served as the home’s front steps. She said the home has had Starlink about a year, and it “beats everything.

“Before Starlink, we did not have, like Wi-Fi or anything, we had hot spots. They sucked. Even cell phones, they don't work out here,” she said. “I thought it would give out because of the snow. For a week we had like a blizzard, but it did not even glitch.”

She said her son, Thi’lyn Castillo, was attending a kindergarten Navajo school “on the reservation, but they had no electronics.” He began falling behind in school during the shutdown.

“I had to transfer him to Cuba. And when we got to Cuba, and when they got the Starlink, he started to catch up,” she said. “It caught him up real quick. And I got to know the teachers a lot better. That's how I got to know the teachers face-to-face, because I don't have a vehicle. So that's the only way I've ever met his teachers, is through the computer.”

Her other two younger children, twins Miracle Castillo and Mariano Castillo, also attend Cuba ISD.

Nevaeh Martinez, a sophomore at Cuba high, said she remembers her lock-down studies before Starlink was installed.

“It was hard,” she said,  adding that she fell behind in class. On a 1-to-10 scale, she’d rank the internet service as an eight.

Starlink also presents challenges

While all of the Starlink users who spoke with the Southern New Mexico Journalism Collaborative say the satellite technology has worked well, there are a few concerns that users both in Cuba and with the Hoh tribe in Washington have expressed.

The Starlink installation is entirely up to the user, so families “have to have somebody with technical expertise to install it,” said Asue, of the Hoh tribe. 

Also problematic with the service is that “there is no customer support for Starlink when you are having issues,” said Chavez. “So we (CISD) get all the calls, and so our guys have to figure out what's going on.”

District officials said it is sometimes difficult to get replacement parts, and Starlink’s periodic software updates sometimes confuse users, who unplug and replug the equipment in an attempt to reboot the system.

In addition, Cuba ISD at first had trouble reaching Starlink officials. A chance social connection allowed them to finally connect with the company. But it’s unclear how challenging or not that networking process could be for organizations that otherwise don’t have such a relationship. 

Starlink has also had larger controversies. The International Astronomical Union in June 2019 warned that Starlink was a large-scale “satellite constellation” — a network of satellites owned and controlled by a single operation — that could “threaten astronomical observations” by introducing swarms of satellites that might upset the balance of space light currently being observed by researchers.

In August 2022, the Federal Communications Commission rejected Starlink’s application to receive $886 million in funding from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Program after determining the company “failed to demonstrate that the providers could deliver the promised service. 

“We must put scarce universal service dollars to their best possible use as we move into a digital future that demands ever more powerful and faster networks,” said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in the press release.

In addition, Starlink’s internet speeds slow down if there is overwhelming demand by users in a particular area, officials said. Because of that, it tends to be a better fit for users in rural locations than those in cities.

Representatives for Starlink declined to be interviewed for this story. 

A significant cost

Starlink has a one-time set-up fee of nearly $600 per home, plus an ongoing subscription cost of more than $100 per month. This is a significant cost for families or — as is the case for CISD, school districts — to cover.

CISD pursued federal funding directly to equip its students with Starlink, bypassing a slow state funding process that has yet to yield the district support. CISD records show that $1.9 million was approved from the federal ESSER III Fund for the 2022-2023 school year, a portion of which the district set aside for the Starlink connections.  

State Public Education Department officials said that they are currently paying for 300 Starlink subscriptions statewide “not including Cuba.” 

CISD Superintendent Karen Sanchez-Griego said the district has set aside its own funding to try and continue paying for Starlink if government monies end for that internet technology.

With the FCC’s 2022 rejection of SpaceX’s application for $855 million in federal Rural Digital Opportunity funds — because of doubts the company could achieve its promised service — rural school districts like Cuba ISD may have to look elsewhere for additional money.

Academic gains attributed to Starlink

Cuba ISD officials are confident that the Starlink satellite connections have improved academic performance for their rural students, and cite a recent study they say reflects that.

A major part of that is attendance, said Sanchez-Griego, who said that “students who had internet connectivity showed an increase in school wide attendance, from 59 percent daily when in remote to 91 percent daily.”

“This data is based on students being able to see the teacher live, and to be able to ask questions, work in groups via Zoom classes, Google work, etcetera,”  she said. 

Sanchez-Griego said that they tracked the progress of 121 students who signed onto a summer program as a way of assessing the benefit of the rural high-speed internet investment that the district made.

“We wanted to keep track of the number of kids who had Starlink setup, to see what increases in academics we saw,” she said, and added that the test scores “showed a growth of 9 percent in math and 11 percent in reading.”

A report from Munetrix, an academic performance analysis company, shows that the Cuba ISD students who had access to the internet — including those in rural areas with Starlink — had increases in their developmental level, which is an academic measure of student ability.

Sanchez-Griego said she doesn’t favor one internet provider over another, but that the investment into Starlink has been beneficial for the district’s students.

“Cuba Public Schools turned to Starlink in a solution-oriented manner to support students in rural New Mexico and in sovereign nations, in Cuba ISD's case, the Navajo Nation,” said Sanchez-Griego. “Having internet connectivity for students in Cuba ISD, which are largely Native American and Hispanic children in rural New Mexico, has been a game changer for them.”

‘It does make school easier now’

Historically, New Mexico students lag below the national average in academic performance, which in 2014 pushed advocates for Native and Hispanic students to make an aggressive move to improve public education in the state through a landmark lawsuit. 

Just a handful of CISD students lack high-speed internet now, marking a huge improvement since the pandemic’s onset. Other administrators credit the leadership of Sanchez-Griego, who doggedly overcame a series of challenges to get families connected.

“She came into this district, and she was focused on equity and she said: ‘We are going to get internet to these students’ homes,’” recalled Chavez. “And in my mind, thinking about the traditional way of getting connectivity out there would be fiber, so I said to myself, ‘this lady, esta bien loca,” he said. “And she pushed it and pushed it, and here we are, and kids have broadband today.”

In a small green home with white chipped trim and metal roofing in the village of Cuba, 7-year-old Kathan Gutierrez and his 13-year old sister Felicia Romero were seen working on their computers, sitting on the bed, scrolling through websites. Their family had previously had a fixed wireless internet provider, with spotty coverage, they said.

“It does make school easier now,” said Romero, an eighth-grader at Cuba Middle School. “It's amazing. You get a better internet connection, and it's clear when you are talking (on Zoom). Usually before, on Zoom, it did not work as good and they would kick you out, and now it works.”

"I was failing some of my classes because I would not be able to get on zoom because it would kick me out, and I wouldn't be able to do the school work and now I can do all the school work, and get on all the zooms and stuff,” she said. “But now most of my grades are up.”

Mutual acts of goodwill

For Atencio, vice president of the local Navajo Nation government, the arrival of Starlink to the region around Cuba was born from a simple gesture of goodwill from the Navajo community — the rescue of a woman hiking with her injured dog. 

“We would never have had this opportunity unless somebody from our community reached out and helped Kendra Joseph,” he said. “That's something we're incredibly thankful for, and will always be thankful for Kendra and Crystal because that was the connection that made it happen.”

Joseph said her time spent with the Trujillo family, who aided her and her dog during her cross-country trek, is a reminder of the benefits “of being open, and putting yourself out there.”

“Just personally knowing some of the people in this community, and being helped so much by them, it was just really fun to get to work with them to try and get this project off the ground, and be a very small part of that for this community,” she said.