Funding Cuts Threaten Middle School Labs

The funding fate of 13 middle school technology laboratories, six of them in the Valley, remained uncertain this week, caught under the federal budget-cutting ax, school district officials said.

The high-tech, hands-on labs, part of the Defense Department’s applied math and technology program, were originally paid for by federal dollars channeled through the California National Guard.

The Valley labs, two of which have been in operation for a year and another four that are under construction, and the other seven labs elsewhere in the district were supposed to be working prototypes for a partnership between the Los Angeles Unified School District and the California National Guard, in which teachers would pair up with “instructional partners”--computer and technology specialists from the Army, said Gene Lew, who coordinates the program for the district.

It was working like a charm at sites including San Fernando and Sepulveda middle schools, Lew said. The problem? Members of Congress appear disinclined to continue funding the program, so the school district and the individual middle schools must scramble to pay the $500,000 yearly tab to keep the labs operational at all sites.

Unless funding comes through from an unanticipated source, he said, the district may not be able to pay for the National Guard instructional partners, or schools may be forced to scrimp on supplies.

But Army National Guard Capt. David Kelly, who works at Sepulveda Middle School in North Hills, is philosophical about the possibility that the school district may be unable to pay his salary next year. At least seven of the labs, with their computers and robotics and biotechnology equipment, are already built, and classes can continue there, he said.

Nothing can diminish the excitement of the 180 Sepulveda students, he added.

“When most of the kids came in here, the only thing they knew about computers was how to play computer games,” Kelly recalled. “But once they got into the lab and got over their fear of computers, they really lit up. Their reaction to the lab is phenomenal.”