[Winona Online Democracy]
At 09:37 PM 8/29/00 -0500, Craig Brooks wrote:
>[Winona Online Democracy]
>
>I suggest we consider seeking support from the local School Board,
>City Council and County Board. I am not sure how the State offices
>like WSU, Tech. College, DNR etc. fit in. Maybe someone at WSU could
>get help from their computer people on what the laws/rules are about
>disposition of old State computer equipment.
>We are tentatively planning on going to the County Board on this issue
>on Oct. 10th. Could others take the lead on going to the School Board
>and City Council?
There are perhaps two issues here from the School Board perspective (my
particular interest).
1) The schools could certainly always use newer computers, printers,
scanners, etc, but like the rest of you we ALSO have piles of outdated
equipment which is no longer useful to us (i.e. "junk") even while we are
still working on getting useful equipment to all of the schools and
teachers. Please don't view the public schools as a place to get rid of the
really old stuff. If any other public agencies have somewhat newer
equipment you might want to "transfer", please contact our information
systems director with a specific list of what you have available. If we can
use it, you can then contact the Superintendent's office to get put on the
agenda for a monthly meeting, and we would be more than happy to accept the
still useful instruments. If you want to e-mail me the specifics of what you
have (please look up your system specifics for processor type and speed,
RAM, etc) I will be more than happy to be the one to take this to our I.S.
people and then to the Board agenda if appropriate.
2) This "thread" arose from the idea of cybercafes, for which the schools
should be ideally suited: multiple buildings around the community, lightly
used evenings and weekends. Unfortunately, we have tried a number of times
to make our computer labs more available to the public, and it simply has
not worked out very well. The biggest problems seem to be staffing and
access: having a computer room open means that it must be supervised, and
that would mean volunteers (need I recount our recent staff layoffs?) who
could make long-term (e.g. academic year) committments. In most of the
schools, we would also be required to have certain licensed custodial staff
in the building at the time, for which we would obviously be paying
salaries. Plus, issues such as "who pays for damaged equipment" arise.
BUT: this is still a great idea, and we need to find some way to make it
work. We are always looking for ways to increase the schools' community
involvement. So, since I know we have some of the REAL experts out there,
let's ask them:
ISD 861 employees: what would it take to get the computer facilities in YOUR
building opened up to the public?
Ed Thompson
Ed's witty saying for this week:
If it's called "tourist season", why can't we shoot them?
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