Today Computer Lab Darkens; What’s Cut Tomorrow?

I could get schmaltzy about it and say that no classroom should ever go dark, not when learning could be going on inside.

But I’ll try to stick to the nuts and bolts while reciting what’s happened at Rossmoor Elementary School in the Los Alamitos Unified School District. From what I can gather, it sounds like a situation where no one is really to blame and yet there’s an inescapable conclusion:

This ain’t right.

Bear in mind we’re not talking about a dirt-poor school district with shaky standing. Los Al, as it’s commonly known, is often acknowledged as one of the state’s finest school districts. So when they turn off the lights there, it makes you wonder.

The short-term history is that Los Al has been making budget cuts in recent years, according to Rossmoor Principal Laurel Telfer, but mostly at the district administration level. Inevitably, though, the cuts got closer and closer to the schoolhouse doors and last spring, some choices had to be made about what programs would be iced for this year.

Of the various options, the main items designated for the deep-freeze at Rossmoor were a science lab and a computer lab. However, a parents group that has raised money in recent years mounted its white horses again and ponied up enough to save the science lab.

That brings us to the present, with the computer lab left, literally, in the dark.

“It’s pretty much gathering dust,” Telfer said last week.

It may be hard for some of us old-timers to realize it, but computer training is no longer a frill. The 3 R’s are still great, but computer ignorance in this day and age puts a kid behind the 8-ball.

It’s not as though Rossmoor’s computer lab is state-of-the-art. It consists of 18 aging Apples, all at least 10 years old. The software is educational in nature and coordinated with the curriculum. Kids don’t go in there to play Nintendo.

“The concept of having kids using a computer is crucial to our program,” Telfer said. The school got a state grant last year that opened up every classroom to a wide range of video equipment and instructional tapes, but the inability of the students to retreat to the computer lab leaves a “big hole,” Telfer said.

“The interesting thing is that the cuts have been coming year after year, but because they’ve been so far away from the actual classrooms, most districts have absorbed them. People think life is going on as normal, but the last couple of years they’re getting into the heart of the instructional program.”

The irony of the computer lab going under, Telfer said, is that Los Al officials want children to begin using computers at the kindergarten level.

I said I wouldn’t get schmaltzy, and it would be inaccurate to make Telfer sound like she’s making an anguished cry for help. She discussed the situation in rather matter-of-fact terms which is, in fact, how school officials describe their wish lists these days.

Some schools severely need upgraded playground equipment. Some schools need new furniture. Some have new textbook series but can’t afford the hardware that accompanies it. Several principals I talked to lamented the absence of phys ed aides or music teachers.

Is there a way to turn on the lights in the Rossmoor computer lab?

I asked Telfer about parental volunteers. Some could surely be found, she said, but scheduling them with any kind of permanence has proved difficult. “We’ve talked about it, but we can’t make it work,” she said.

Many of her students’ parents have the necessary computer expertise, but it’s awkward for school officials to approach parents about taking on such a responsibility.

Do I see a corporate volunteer stepping forward?

If not, I suppose that relegates the computer lab to the status of just another “sign of the times.” That is, the science lab barely survives but the computer lab doesn’t, just as instrumental music and physical education programs have shrunk in other schools.

Undoubtedly, Rossmoor students can survive without a computer lab. Students in my generation would have survived without a school library, too, but we were helped immeasurably by having one.

And in case you forget . . . Yes, it’s just the computer lab that has gone dark this year.

But what about next year? Even assuming there are no more budget cutbacks, Rossmoor likely “will be back to where we were before,” Telfer said.

Which means that unless the private fund-raising group comes up with another 25 grand, the lights may go out in the science lab, too.