DATE: Thursday, November 27, 1997           TAG: 9711270649

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT 

                                            LENGTH:   43 lines

STATE WINDFALL BRINGS 200,000 CALCULATORS, MANY TO LOCAL CLASSES

Virginia will spend $20 million from an insurance settlement to buy 200,000 sophisticated calculators for students statewide to use in algebra and higher math courses.

The number of calculators is enough for every ninth- and 10th-grader in the state and about 40 percent of eighth-graders, roughly the number of eighth-graders who take algebra.

Across South Hampton Roads, administrators expressed delight with the gift.

``We didn't really expect it, but we're very grateful,'' said Lynn E. Cross, an assistant to the school superintendent in Suffolk, which expects to receive more than 2,100 calculators next week. Suffolk students will be able to use them in science as well as math classes, and also at home, Cross said.

In Norfolk, officials say the school system is expecting about 6,000 calculators before the end of the year.

Previously, students in Norfolk and Suffolk had to share calculators provided by the school or were asked to buy their own.

The state's purchase comes through a fund designated to help students meet new curriculum standards.

The machines are graphing calculators, which can perform some of the same functions as computers. Each calculator costs about $95 in stores.

The new curriculum standards call for students to use graphing calculators in first-year algebra and higher math classes, and high school students taking a new statewide algebra exam this spring will have to answer questions requiring the use of the machines.

Both Cross and Denise Walston, Norfolk's acting senior coordinator for mathematics, said learning to use the graphing calculators is an integral requirement of the state's new Standards of Learning. Many school districts were concerned that they couldn't adequately prepare students if they didn't have enough calculators.

``We now eliminate the question of equity,'' Walston said.

The money comes from a settlement the state reached with Trigon Blue Cross-Blue Shield when Trigon won state permission to become a for-profit insurance company. MEMO: The Associated Press and staff writers Matthew Bowers and Denise

Watson contributed to this story.

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