ORANGE : Lucky Numbers for School Computers

Two days before the school year began, $80,000 worth of computer equipment sat in boxes at Canyon High School, ready to be installed. But the school district was hit by budget cuts, and officials feared that the equipment would have to be returned.

Then the school won big at bingo.

Thanks to $64,000 in bingo game proceeds, within two weeks Canyon High will have its first video laser disc technology, and each ninth-grade English class will have computers.

“A lot of people are opposed to bingo in the schools but they don’t understand the potential” of the game as a fund-raiser, game manager Sandy Ryan said.

Canyon High bingo began in 1988 and generated about $100,000 in its first year, Ryan said.

Most of that money had been earmarked for a new weight room, but when Ryan heard that the technology program was in jeopardy, the funds were redirected.

Canyon High began planning a technology development program in June to expand beyond the the word-processing functions available to students in the library. With the new equipment, said Principal Jack Fox, the class of 1994 “will be totally proficient in computers. They will look at a computer, and they will know what to do with it.”

The bingo earnings plus $15,000 in state lottery money will provide IBM Model 30 computers for the advanced computer science and business classes, Apple IIe computers for freshman English, desktop publishing programs for the journalism and yearbook courses, reference and research programs for the library, and video laser disc technology for the science and math departments.