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Surplus Computers
A number of people profess to be shocked to discover that the distribution of the state’s surplus computers was influenced by partisan considerations during the recent election.
That was fairly obvious to people in Rappahannock from the date of the announcement by Del. Jay Katzen in the last weeks of the campaign that he had 30 of the state’s surplus computers available for distribution to schools in the 31 st House of Delegates district and that Rappahannock County Elementary School would be getting 10 of them. In fact over 300 computers went to areas like the 31st District where incumbent Republicans were facing strong challenges from Democrats.
It is not likely that these computers were responsible for Del. Katzen’s reelection. However, it is likely that if the state’s Department of Education had had time to develop criteria for the distribution of the computers, RCES, with one of the state’s lowest ratios of students to computers, would have received none.
Since most of the political shenanegans in Richmond go on at Rappahannock County’s expense, the county and the schools are happy to come out on the winning end for a change.
These computers are hardly state-of-the-art. However, elementary school students do not need the latest and fastest computers. A more serious problem is that they arrived stripped of all software, including disc operating software. In fact, RCES is generally computer rich and software poor, and at the last School Board meeting Principal Raye Tupper received permission to send out a fundraising letter.
This past year marked the end of a grant from the RJ R/Nabisco Company to RCES to purchase computers and develop software to use on them. From that grant the school acquired about 100 computers. Software development proved more difficult.
The idea was to develop software to cover most of the fourthgrade curriculum. At the end of three years, programs had been written covering most of fourth-grade mathematics, but little progress had been made on the rest of the curriculum. What the school systen chiefly learned from this experience was how time consuming devel oping good educational software is.
Purchasing it is expensive, but in the absense of another grant to pay software developers, it seems the best option for making the computers useful to Rappahannock’s students.
Alumni Tournament
The Alumni Basketball Tournament has become much more of a homecoming than Homecoming itself for former RCHS students.
Since it takes place over the Thanksgiving holiday, it can attract former boys’ basketball stars who are currently in college as well as those in the working world.
There was plenty of fun basketball at the gym Friday and Saturday nights. The athletic department, which has to pay referees for all home athletic competitions benefits from the tournament.
Some years back there was an effort to also have a women’s alum ni basketball tournament. Not enough players were interested to make a success of this. Perhaps the time has come to try' again. The women’s game, with two teams participating, could be played between the consolation and final game in the second evening of the tournament.
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