How do you expand educational time without expanding school hours? The answer: turn the school bus into an extension of the classroom by enabling the fleet with Wi-Fi.

It’s a solution that a growing number of school districts are turning to, particularly those in rural areas where bus rides can add more than an hour to student commutes. These are often the same students suffering from the “homework gap” driven by unequal digital access: 18 percent of all students in rural areas have limited internet access, or no access at all, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

“The school bus is sort of the sovereign ground of the district,” says Gary Lambert, director of 21st century learning at Beekmantown Central School District, a largely rural area in upstate New York. “The moment kids set foot on the bus, they’re in school, whether they’ve ever thought about that or not. Any money that we can scrape together to give them something we can’t guarantee they’re going to get elsewhere is well spent.”