ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605130039
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
Fairfax County school officials, saying they lack the money to buy the computers that classrooms need, are considering asking parents to buy laptops for their children to take to school every day.
If approved by the School Board, the plan could begin this fall with more than 400 sixth-graders at five elementary schools. Their parents would be advised, although not required, to buy Pentium laptops for $1,800, a discount price arranged through a private school foundation. Children in low-income families would get the machines free.
School administrators said their goal eventually would be to expand the program to other grades and to all county schools.
The proposal, unprecedented in the Washington area, reflects the sense of urgency among educators and many parents to make computers a larger part of daily school life. Advocates said it also is an acknowledgment that Fairfax, the area's largest and wealthiest school system, will not be able to afford the necessary equipment because of continuing budget cutbacks.
``As of right now, children in Fairfax County public schools will graduate having never used a computer day in and day out as a way to do business, the business of being a student,'' said Robert Kelly, an organizer of the effort and the executive director of the Fairfax Education Foundation, a private fund-raising group.
With the blessing of Superintendent Robert R. Spillane, the school system's technology specialists have been discussing the idea in recent days with administrators, teachers and parents at the five schools that could be affected this fall.
The participating schools would expand the children's access to the Internet, CD-ROMs and school-to-home e-mail, officials said.
Schools across the Washington area and the nation have had problems integrating computers into their curriculum in recent years, in large part because of financial troubles that delayed plans to buy equipment and to train teachers to use it.
Many school systems, including Fairfax's, ask students to pay $80 or more for such devices as graphing calculators for math classes. But few, if any, have asked parents to foot the bill for a computer, said Martin Siegel, director of research at the Center for Excellence in Education at Indiana University.
``It's rare, very rare,'' Siegel said. ``I've never heard of it at the elementary or high school levels.'' Siegel said he doubted the laptops would have much of an effect on classroom instruction at first, because teachers would need time to learn how to take full advantage of them.
But so far, the response from Fairfax parents has been mostly positive, PTA officials said, in part because the education foundation has raised the possibility of arranging low-interest loans.
Under one proposal, schools or local businesses and PTAs would buy computers for children who qualify for free school lunches.
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