COSTA MESA : Computer Lending Sparks Donations

Earlier this summer, the principal of Kaiser Elementary School had a secondhand Apple computer and 30 families who wanted it.

To meet the demand, Principal Christine Jurenka planned to lend the computer for a month at a time to each family on the waiting list. The last family was to receive the well-traveled computer and accompanying software sometime in 1995.

But within days of the start of the program, a man from Westminster gave the school 10 computers. A local business gave three more. In all, 30 computers--one for each waiting family--were donated by people who had read about the checkout program in the newspaper.

“It is wonderful. We are in business now and in great shape,” Jurenka said Monday. The 30 computers, including Apples and IBMs, and printers are now stacked throughout the school’s computer lab, administrative offices, the nurse’s office, and even in one teacher’s house.

“We have a lot more options now than we did before,” she said, adding that the school could use still more computers and printers to lend to families that otherwise cannot afford such equipment.

The effort--the first of its kind in the county--is designed to help level the academic playing field. There are hundreds of computer-less families in Costa Mesa, whose children tend to lag a bit behind those students who do their homework on a word processor, Jurenka said.

By signing a simple contract, those families can borrow a computer from the school much like a library book.

“If (young students) can learn the computer at school and practice at home, I think we will see accelerated progress,” Jurenka said.

Kaiser students begin learning computers in kindergarten and are generally proficient by third grade, she said.

In addition to the 30 families that have signed up for a computer, Jurenka estimates that there are some 250 students at Kaiser Elementary and neighboring Kaiser Primary School whose families still regard a home computer as an unneeded expense.

“We know there are a lot of families who will buy a television or a VCR before a computer,” Jurenka said. “Now we need to make plans to reach those families.”