The Golden LEAF Foundation yesterday announced a $900,000 grant to help a program that aims to provide laptop computers to every high-school student in Wilkes County.
The grant will be used to provide laptop computers for all of the school system's 700 or so seniors to use when they start school next fall. Some of the money will be also be used to buy software and equipment.
The grant is a major step in the school system's plan to provide a laptop for each high-school student and a personal digital assistant, a type of handheld computer, for each student in grades 3-8.
The PDAs and laptop computers will be passed on to students in the next class each year. The computers will have tracking devices built in so that if a student loses one, it can be found.
The students will turn in the laptops and PDAs at the end of the school year. School officials will check the equipment and do upgrades on them over the summer.
The plan also calls for each of Wilkes County Schools' 646 classrooms to have a smart board, a data projector and a laptop computer for the teacher. About half the classrooms have those items so far.
"This is probably as good and gratifying a day as I've experienced in my years as a superintendent," Steve Laws, the superintendent of Wilkes County Schools, said yesterday during a breakfast attended by Golden LEAF Foundation officials, school-board members, county officials, principals and other school personnel.
While Wilkes County Schools already had its technology plan in place, the Golden LEAF Foundation grant is also part of the N.C. 1:1 Laptop Initiative, a pilot program that has already provided money for laptop computers for students in 10 other school systems in North Carolina.
The Golden LEAF Foundation has spent $7 million on the project so far, including the amount awarded to Wilkes County Schools.
"We got involved in it because we see it as an economic-development tool," said Mark Sorrells, the senior vice president of Golden LEAF Foundation.
The Golden LEAF Foundation was created in 1999 to get half the money from North Carolina's share of a national settlement with cigarette manufacturers. The board distributes grants for projects to benefit counties that were once tobacco dependent, or those that are economically distressed or rural.
Golden LEAF would like to see the laptop initiative go statewide, Sorrells said. The pilot program was started last year by the General Assembly, supplemented with support from Golden LEAF.
Golden LEAF provides grants for many projects, and this grant to Wilkes County Schools is one of the largest that Golden LEAF is making this year.
"Wilkes has demonstrated they have a very thoughtful and comprehensive development plan," Sorrells said.
Wilkes County Schools plans to spend about $6.5 million on its technology program. The system has already raised about $2.3 million and is still raising money for the program. Many corporations have donated $5,000 each to equip a classroom with a smart board, data projector and laptop computer.
The school system began its three-year technology plan in January by providing PDAs to each student in grades 4-5.
All schools in Wilkes County have wireless Internet access.
For a rural school system, the technology is a vital link to information.
"In three years, nobody will match what Wilkes County has for our kids," Laws said. "It's what's going to get us competitive with everybody."
■ Monte Mitchell can be reached in Wilkesboro at 336-667-5691 or at mmitchell@wsjournal.com.
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