Battered laptop plan still online King to raise private funds

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Despite being battered incessantly and losing substantial amounts of its lifeblood, Gov. Angus King’s laptop endowment is still standing.

Legislators slashed it from $50 million to $30 million, taking the other $20 million, plus about $3 million in interest it earned over the past year, for other purposes.

Now King is charged with raising $15 million from private sources so he can ensure that the fund remains an endowment, with the interest earned on the principal paying for his idea to provide each seventh- and eighth-grader with portable, Internet-capable personal computers.

Even if he doesn’t, in the fall of 2002, Maine seventh-graders can expect to have access to such machines – and a year later eighth-graders will get them – because the remaining money is enough to get the program off the ground and fund it for five or six years.

The relentless legislative assaults on the endowment did not surprise King.

“Given where we started [16 months ago] with having virtually no support – we were at zero support, with people laughing at us – it’s amazing it survived,” King said in an interview Friday.

The governor said he knew that if state revenues tightened up, which they did, every spending proposal “would have to take a hit.”

“I wish we had kept it at $35 million, plus the $3 million interest it earned,” King said. “But I think holding the fund at $30 million is a pretty good accomplishment.”

The single greatest factor in overcoming what King calls “initial hostility” was a plan drawn up by a task force last summer that overhauled the governor’s original idea.

In March 2000, King laid out a plan for creating a $65 million endowment – with $50 million from the state and $15 million from private sources – that would generate enough interest to provide all Maine seventh- through 12th-graders with their own portable, Internet-capable computing devices by 2007. In the original scheme, King would have given the machines to the students.

“The task force changed the idea because people didn’t like the governor’s laptop giveaway,” King said.

Rep. Joseph Bruno of Raymond, the Republican floor leader, said, “A lot of [legislators] think the new technology plan developed last summer makes sense. There was basic agreement that the plan was pretty good and people said, ‘Let’s see if it works’.”

The task force, which was composed of lawmakers, educators and technology experts, said that the most effective course was to target the machines at the middle school grades, starting with seventh- and eighth-graders, and then expanding into high school if money permitted.

The group also recommended that instead of giving the machines to students, the schools should control access and let students sign them out and take them home like library books.

And finally educationally, the task force reversed the plan’s emphasis. While King’s original idea was to teach students to use computers, the panel said students use the machines to learn, for example, by tapping into myriad learning resources on the Internet. And unlike King, the panel also recommended that money be used to train teachers how to integrate the machines into their curricula.

“The task force changed the whole proposal,” said Republican Betty Lou Mitchell of Etna, the Senate chairwoman of the Education Committee.

Lawmakers also saw, she said, that if the proposal wasn’t done statewide, there would be pockets of districts that couldn’t afford to do it on their own.

“That was one of the biggest selling points,” Mitchell said. “We had a plan that would give very child a chance.”

King cited four more reasons for eventual legislative support.

One was the “palpable change in public opinion” toward the idea over time, he said.

Another was that Piscataquis Community Middle School in Guilford had already begun an experiment with providing laptops to students, with funding help from the textile firm Guilford of Maine.

Legislators could visit the school and see that “it was not such a crazy idea,” King said.

In the same vein, the Education Department set up a bank of machines in the State Office Building that lawmakers could use to see the educational possibilities, he added.

And lastly, the idea found both Republican and Democratic champions among lawmakers, especially on the Education Committee, King said, citing in particular Reps. Shirley Richard of Madison, Irvin Belanger of Caribou and Mabel Desmond of Mapleton.

Now it’s up to the governor to drum up $15 million.

“It’s not going to be easy,” King said.

But already a number of foundations and all the major computer makers have shown “significant interest” in the idea, he said. “I’ve met with three or four manufacturers in the last month.”

None have stated their support publicly, he said, because all were waiting to see whether the endowment survived the legislative session.

One computer maker that has already taken a high profile role is Apple Computer, which provided the machines that the Education Department set up in the State Office Building. The company also lent the governor a classroom’s worth of machines when he took his idea on the road this spring, visiting a number of schools to solidify educational support.

Manufacturers are interested, King said, because if they win the Maine contract it would “give them a leg up” on other companies in what he feels will be a trend: states providing students with machines.

Even without the $15 million from private sources, “we have the green light” to put machines in the hands of seventh-graders in September 2002, said Yellow Light Breen, special projects director in the state Department of Education.

To be ready by then, “we have to move pretty expeditiously,” especially in drawing up a detailed plan on which companies can bid, Breen said. Also, the department wants to begin preparing teachers this coming fall on how to integrate machines into the classroom.

And if there is only the $30 million, which can fund the program for five or six years, he said, “We hope we can successfully implement it in year one so legislators will see the benefit of staying the course.”