OAAC
Since 1994

Sheppard School Program
Set for free computers

W. Kensington children will take home high-tech gifts. By Martha Woodall INQUIRER STAFF WRITER.

 The street corners outside the Isaac A. Sheppard Elementary School bristle with blue-and-yellow barricades that the 25th Police District erected to deter drug dealing in a troubled pocket of West Kensington. Despite the heat and the lack of air-conditioning, since last week 160 youngsters have been skipping   past the barriers and up the worn steps into the 101-year-old building for the chance to learn how to use computers that they will get to take home today.  It's the biggest expansion of a project that Pete Doyle founded at his nonprofit Ogontz Avenue Art Company three years ago to recycle discarded computers to inner-city children.  Thanks to major commitments from the state and federal governments, St. Christopher's Hospital for Children and other businesses, Doyle says the Sheppard program is just the first step of an initiative to provide computers for the 11,000 children who attend public schools in what the district calls the Kensington cluster within a year.

   The machines, all powered by either Intel 386 or 486 microprocessors, were discarded by companies and agencies when they upgraded to faster, newer models. Doyle, an artist-turned-computer-programmer from Glenside, came up with the computer recycling idea after talking to young programmers at Rollins Leasing Corp.,a truck-leasing company in Wilmington where he writes software. The programmers told him they had developed their taste for technology by fooling around with computers at home. Ogontz Avenue Art Company also offers art classes and paints neighborhood murals. Before venturing into Kensington, the program provided computers for students primarily in Oak Lane and Germantown.

"This is our big one," Doyle said of the Kensington effort. "This is the one we're going to concentrate on."  Tomas Hanna, principal at Sheppard, was enthusiastic about participating as soon as he heard about the program this spring from Nilsa Gonzalez, leader of the Kensington cluster. She told him officials were leaning toward starting with Sheppard, a school where few of the 414 pupils have computers at home but more than 90 percent of the families have incomes low enough to qualify for the federal government's reduced-cost lunch program. Sheppard is the only school inside an eight-block area cordoned off by the 25th Police District in March to stop drug dealing and to reduce drug-related violence. That violence had been so prevalent that Sheppard officials established a "Code Purple" signal that warned students to run into the building if gunfire erupted outside. Whatever the reasons Sheppard was selected to launch the project, Hanna is grateful.  "Call it the poverty," he said. "Call it the barricades. Call it getting PC's knowing that our kids don't have as much access." Gonzalez also noted that officials from nearby St. Christopher's, which had agreed to provide machines, were interested in beginning with Sheppard. Eventually, each of the 15 schools in the cluster she oversees will be involved.

"I'm so excited," Gonzalez said. She and Hanna said the school district had spent $12,000 to upgrade Sheppard's electrical wiring so it could accommodate computers in the 10 rooms where the classes are being held.  Because of the electrical work, fliers announcing the program were not sent home until a few days before the end of school. But Hanna said word spread rapidly among the families of the students from kindergarten through fourth grade who attend Sheppard.  "We had parents that afternoon who called," said Hanna. "A couple said, 'I have three kids. Do I only get one?' 'Yes,' we said. 'You only get one computer.' But they were really excited." Patricia Roberson, a teacher who oversees technology instruction at Sheppard, said some children stopped by her room to sign up, even before showing the fliers to their parents.

To qualify to take home machines, students must complete a week-long series of 90-minute classes that focus on the basics of operating a personal computer. Since last Tuesday, students have been attending classes offered in two morning shifts taught by 11 staffers organized by Roberson and trained earlier.  In all, Hanna expects 110 families will carry home computers today. The turnout has been high, and he said the youngsters seemed oblivious to the muggy weather.  "When you see the looks on their faces and how they are interacting with the computer and with each other . . ." Hanna said proudly. "They are glued. They are glued."

Although the school has a lab filled with Macintosh computers, plus a computer in nearly every classroom, Hanna believes it's important to put the Intel-based machines into students' homes because those computers are so prevalent in the business world. "I think this is a really exciting and timely initiative to enable young people to learn to use computers and then to be able to take them home so the whole family can become computer-literate," said Councilwoman Happy Fernandez, who helped Doyle make connections with the state and federal government agencies that could provide him with discarded computers.  

Study after study has found that while affluent and middle-class students often have computers at home, youngsters from low-income families don't. And the gap that some have dubbed the "digital divide" is widening. Fernandez called Doyle "a man with a vision and a dream" who is working to ensure that all students, regardless of their family income, are computer literate. "Anyone who hopes to be employed and decently paid in the 21st century must know how to use a computer," Fernandez said. 

Robert Logrono, 7, wasn't looking that far ahead. He said he enjoyed learning to use the computer and even had a spot picked out for it in the dining room.

His mother, Sarah, said she had been attending classes with Robert, peering over his shoulder to make sure she grasps the basics of the computer he is scheduled to bring home this afternoon.  Hanna said the benefits of the program for Sheppard students and their families were so clear that 10 teachers and a classroom aide volunteered to teach the classes before the district found funds from the state's Link-to-Learn technology program for schools to pay them. Each will receive a classroom computer from Doyle's program. "I fight this whole 'Badlands' thing everyday," Hanna said. "We have a bunch of folks who are dedicated. It doesn't matter who's in here," he said, gesturing around his small principal's office. "These folks are going to get it done."  

        1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.  Set for free computers 

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