Schools Demonstrate Internet Progress

In a community where kids with guns seem to outnumber kids with computers lately, the Oxnard School District on Friday celebrated its all-out effort to wire all schools to the Internet.

“It’s kind of like an electronic barn-raising,” said trustee Arthur Joe Lopez. “This is a real commitment, a real promise to every child, that we’re going to provide the best education based on technology.”

The district’s trustees allocated $650,000 in state money last year to drag its elementary and middle schools into the information age. Parent volunteers and corporate sponsors have provided technical support.

Friday, school officials invited them in to see the progress: Children are designing their own “home pages,” publishing school newspapers electronically and using e-mail to communicate with their counterparts at schools around the globe.

“We have four schools that have computer connections now in every classroom,” said Richard Duarte, assistant superintendent of the 14,000-student district. “Our plan is by August of this coming year, all 14 school sites will have a connection.”

Oxnard is not a computer leader among Ventura County school districts, acknowledges Lopez.

But for a community where many children come from lower socioeconomic levels and gang violence is becoming all too common, computers may be even more relevant than elsewhere, officials said.

“We feel there is a sense of urgency,” Duarte said. “We don’t feel [computer access] is going to readily happen in homes.”

If access to information is likely to reinforce divisions between haves and have-nots, as experts suggest, Oxnard’s efforts could mean the difference in many youngsters’ lives, officials believe.

No one expects to beat guns into gigabytes in a ‘90s twist of the swords into plowshares idea.

But education must prepare kids to aspire to something more, said parent Everett F. Batey II, a computer expert who has lent the district his expertise.

“We’ve got to do more than potty-training kids in elementary school,” he said. “And I think we’re doing so much more here.”