A Hard Drive for the Kids

SANTA ANA —  With cool aplomb, 13-year-old Benny Hernandez clicked a mouse and was quickly signed on to the Internet for the first time in his life. Moments later, he was composing a letter to President Clinton that he planned to send, electronically, to the White House before the lunch bell rang.

“I want to know what the president is going to do with the government,” the Lathrop Intermediate School seventh-grader said as he typed with two fingers. “I want to know what he’s going to do with the world.”

Lathrop, recipient of a federal grant that helped pay for 75 computers, is one of a growing number of Orange County campuses entering the Information Age as the school year begins.

But for all its success, Lathrop also demonstrates the struggles some schools have in getting up to speed with the fast-changing technology: Without a federal grant to pay for its computer hardware, the school would have been left in the lurch like many others in the Santa Ana Unified School District and elsewhere in the county.

Although the level of technology varies among the districts, Orange County Department of Education officials said that, overall, county schools have been behind their counterparts throughout the state when it comes to getting online.

The county’s December 1994 bankruptcy is a big reason. Most local school districts had invested in a county-run investment pool that lost $1.64 billion of its value. Schools have received between 80% and 90% of their investment back so far, with the rest due only if the county successfully sues the financial firms it blames for the bankruptcy.

“Orange County is a little behind because of the bankruptcy,” said Bill Habermehl, the department’s associate superintendent. “School districts could not commit funds until this year. I’m sure in the next 12 to 18 months, we will catch up to everyone.”

The cost of up-to-date computers and the installation of wiring and hardware necessary to bring classrooms online has kept many schools behind.

Lathrop was able to acquire computers and other equipment for its 2,100 students because of a $1.3-million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The school also took advantage of wiring conducive to high-technology use that had been installed for classroom television instruction.

But most of the other schools in Santa Ana Unified are not as fortunate and are still being wired for Internet access. Once that process is complete, the district will work on improving its student-computer ratio, which is 28 to 1.

“Our goal is to have a computer in every classroom, and our long-term goal is to have a ratio of five students per computer,” said Gary Wheaton, district technology coordinator.

Other districts are applying for grants and looking for other ways to finance their transition into cyberspace. But it is a daunting task, officials say.

“We have plans that are unfunded,” said Ray Miller, director of data processing for the Huntington Beach Union High School District, which serves approximately 12,500 students. “It would cost $3.5 million to install what we need at each campus and buy new computers. We’ve been having budget cuts for eight years, and we just turned the corner.”

The Laguna Beach Unified School District, which is experiencing major financial troubles that led to its superintendent stepping down, has one Internet link at the district’s only high school.

“It’s a priority, but right now our district is experiencing some financial concerns,” said Bob Costlin, the district’s data processing manager. “It’s something that we are interested in, but it just takes money.”

Neither state nor county education officials have statistics on Internet use in the classroom, but they see a widespread drive to get hooked up.

In February, President Clinton proposed creating a $2-billion fund to help schools hook up to the Internet. A month later, Clinton gave a high-profile endorsement to NetDay96, an ambitious program--sponsored by computer makers--aimed at wiring the state’s 13,000 schools to the Internet. In one day, more than 20,000 volunteers helped wire hundreds of schools, bringing them a step closer to going online.

Marina High School in Huntington Beach was among the 2,500 campuses in the state wired by volunteers. At the end of the day, the school had 20 donated, used computers online.

Other schools in the Huntington Beach Union High School District have at least one computer, but new wiring and other improvements to the building that would enable them to be connected to the Internet must still installed.

Is it worth the trouble and expense?

“Absolutely,” Habermehl said. “The Internet is an avenue to having an array of information available. Computers in the classroom provide better learning for students and greater flexibility for teachers.”

Said Patrick Levens, Capistrano Unified’s director of secondary education: “This is a way to bring real-life data into the classroom so you can do large-scale, investigative problem solving and critical thinking.”

A few years ago at Aliso Viejo High School, Levens recalled, a physics teacher set up a computer chat room that enabled her students to communicate with each other at night while struggling through their homework.

“After that, the school had a higher enrollment in the physical sciences,” he said. “The students just go absolutely crazy when they are able to do the kind of work that excites them.”

Most of Capistrano Unified’s 37 schools are either online or are close to being online, Levens said. Some schools have between 40 and 50 computers as the district works toward a goal of having at least four computers per classroom.

Levens and other educators familiar with the capabilities of the Internet are excited about the prospect of incorporating it into their teaching.

“I see opportunities for contact with other classes throughout the world,” said Jim O’Roark, who has taught at Santa Ana’s Lathrop for eight years. “This is a great opportunity for the kids to avoid becoming computer phobic.”

O’Roark said he plans to require his students to use the Internet for research on science projects.

“It’s something that is exciting to them, and they will be more motivated to explore and to learn. The Internet provides immediacy. When they had an announcement about Mars from NASA, there was a CNN Web page up that day. The kids can really get up-to-the-minute information instead of looking into an encyclopedia that is 10 years old.”

Although some school districts are making quick progress toward gaining Internet access, others are still in the early stages of developing long-range technology plans that will eventually put them online. They are looking for a realistic way to pay for the underground wiring and hardware, which is particularly difficult and expensive to install at older schools.

“There is such a wide range of capabilities and capacities right now,” said John Hume, the county Department of Education’s technology specialist. “You have tiny little districts with no money that got a late start in technology and big districts that have partnerships with businesses. We’re all over the map.”

Schools built in the past five years have an advantage in the cyberspace movement over older schools because their wiring is better suited for high technology. Older schools have a more difficult time making the transition because of problems such as walls or ceilings that can’t be disturbed because they contain asbestos.

Districts in growing areas can also benefit from special fees imposed on developers who want to build housing. The Saddleback Valley Unified School District fought to have developers pay such a fee, which has been earmarked to fund new technology in the schools.

“We were in on it early, and this funding source really put us on the map,” said Norman Neville, the district’s technology specialist.

All 35 Saddleback schools are online. The district, which has close to 2,000 computers in its classrooms, acted as a consultant in March during NetDay96 and is considered a leader in Internet access, county education officials said.

The district also boasts one of the top-ranked technology schools in the state: Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate School, where “they have the most, the best and the latest” in computer technology, Neville said.

But because the money must be spent at the school nearest where housing was developed, the wealth is not spread to older schools in the district.

“There are schools in our district that have great needs still,” Neville said. “But at least every school now has at least three computers in a central location linked to the Internet.”

The Irvine Unified School District is installing wiring, at a cost of $1.1 million, that will give each of its 32 schools access to the Internet. Initially, students will have to go to their campus library or media center to access the Internet because of a shortage of computers.

“Our district will take responsibility for putting in the wiring and hardware, but local schools and their fund-raisers will have to pay for the computers,” said Dean Waldfogel, Irvine’s deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

Although many county schools receive computers donated by businesses, the machines are often obsolete and difficult to upgrade to the latest technology.

“We are grateful, but I’d like to see them donate newer equipment,” said John Walden, the Anaheim Union High School District’s director of information services. “We feel obligated to graduate students with state-of-the-art equipment.”

At Anaheim Union, which has 16 campuses, schools have up to six computers on campus, and each campus will soon have Internet access at the school library.

Still, many school district officials dream of having modern computer labs at schools such as the ones at Rancho Santa Margarita and Lathrop intermediate schools. They say this will give their students an edge in their studies and later in the working world.

Laura Westermeiher, who runs Lathrop’s computer lab, said the students she has trained are learning computer skills and how to use the Internet at a quicker pace than most adults.

“I’m amazed at how quickly they catch on,” Westermeiher said. “They have no fear.”