Volunteers to Link Up School Computers

Last spring, California schools tapped into a flood of community goodwill when 20,000 or more volunteers spent an entire Saturday installing high-speed computer data networks at several thousand campuses.

Aided by President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore--both wearing work gloves and hard hats--the volunteers here touched off a nationwide drive that will result in 32 states holding NetDay events this fall, modeled on what happened in California.

This Saturday, thousands of volunteers--parents, teachers, technicians, business leaders and others--are expected to show up again in schools across the state to continue the effort. Saturday also is NetDay in seven other states and the District of Columbia, reflecting the nationwide spread of what was once ridiculed as a disorganized pipe dream.

Some states have already held their events. Volunteers in Connecticut installed wiring at nearly 75% of the state’s schools Sept. 28, and more than 3,000 public and private schools in New York are being similarly transformed this month.

“It’s different folks in different parts of the country” taking the lead on the project, said Michael Kaufman, the San Franciscan who co-founded the NetDay movement. “We simply share everything we can about what we learned in California . . . and wish them the best of luck.”

California still has far to go to achieve the goal of a task force appointed by state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin--to have every classroom tied into a computer network that has access to the Internet. But such volunteer efforts are helping make a dent in the $11-billion cost of fully wiring and equipping the state’s schools.

In March, nearly 70 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District participated in the first NetDay. But the district was criticized for not making it easier for schools to participate.

On NetDay2, more than 100 district schools will be taking part, and many more companies will be donating labor and equipment.

Pacific Bell is donating to the Los Angeles district 103 of the $350 kits of wire and other gear needed to meet the project’s goal of installing wiring for at least five classrooms and a library or computer lab at each site.

Other companies and institutions participating include GTE California, MCI, Sun Microsystems, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USC, UCLA, Kaiser Permanente and IBM.

The first NetDay “was kind of like a dry run for us so we were able to see how, as a district, to respond to this volunteer effort,” said Andy Rogers, a coordinator in the district’s information technology division.

This time, “we have been able to get the word out to more people.”