Computers on the way

Back during his State of the State speech in February, Gov. Angus King presented the unusual idea of having state prisoners upgrade donated computers for use in schools and libraries. It sounded like one of those things that worked on paper but nowhere else. It looks now, however, that Maine schools are going to benefit from this idea.

“I’m announcing tonight,” the governor said last winter, “a program to double the number of computers available to our kids — at a cost that will be lost in the rounding of most education budgets.” That was five months ago, and though not much has been said about the program since, the people putting it together have been busy.

The Maine Correctional Center in Windham has hired a vocational trades instructor, is interviewing prisoners who want to participate and has a production-line goal to begin delivering computers by September. Currently, the center has between 300 and 400 donated obsolete computers waiting to be upgraded and a grant from the Libra Foundation to buy the hardware to do it. The first upgraded computers should be assembled in the next couple of weeks.

As the governor noted in his speech, The Detwiler Foundation in California came up with the idea for the program. It has helped Maine and several other states get started. The need for such a program is obvious. Computer skills are an essential addition to the knowledge students must have to be successful after they graduate. Too many schools have either a limited number of computers or computers that are too old to be useful today. This leaves students at a large disadvantage, with academic and economic consequences.

School administrators are aware of this, but only a few have the budgets to regularly expand and upgrade their computer networks. Sometimes, businesses have tried to help by donating old computers directly to schools. But students need outdated equipment about as much as business people do, making the schools little better than computer graveyards.

That’s why the upgrade program makes so much sense. And Maine businesses have responded. Donations have come from big firms such as L.L. Bean, UNUM, Hannaford Bros., Bath Iron Works and from small businesses all over. Congress, in fact, added an incentive last year for these donations. Under the 21st Century Classrooms Act for Private Technology Investment (a title, by the way, also in need of an upgrade), companies donating computers to schools within two years of purchase can deduct more under the charitable contributions tax line.

Once schools and libraries get the computers they need, there may be room for other institutions, including the University of Maine System and the technical colleges, to take advantage of this program. It’s turning out to be a small idea with the potential for large results in Maine.