Dateline: May 17, 2001

Hedley ISD wins grant to buy 38 computers 

Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

Teachers at Hedley ISD will soon be enjoying the benefits of new computers thanks to a $48,801 grant from the state Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund (TIF).

The TIF grant will pay for 35 new computers, a file server, and a network that will link all teacher computers with the administration office and with each other, district officials say.

A local match will bring the total price tag of the project to a little more than $53,000.

“We’re proud of this grant,” said HISD Principal Terry Stevens. “It will help us out a lot. It will nearly double the computer capacity on our campus.”

Currently, the Hedley school system doesn’t have an intercom or a local e-mail network, Stevens said. The new technology will create room-to-room e-mail capability to ease communication throughout the campus.

Current computers on teachers’ desks will be available for student use for Internet-assisted research, and computers currently in the administration offices will be added to the school’s computer labs.

School officials believe this added capacity will benefit their students by giving them more access and greater opportunities to work with computers.

“They have to know how to do those things on the computer, or they will be lost when they get to college,” Stevens said. “So much research is done on the Internet now.”

The new network will also allow teachers to report their grades to the office via computer, which will eliminate a lot of paperwork. It’s something other school districts have been doing for a while.

“We’re finally getting caught up to everybody else,” Stevens said.

Hedley math teacher Jon Leggitt prepared the grant application for Hedley.

“I give him lots of credit of doing the legwork on this,” Stevens said. “He did a wonderful job. I think it took him three months, and much of it was on his own time.”

Since its creation by the 74th Legislature in 1995, TIF has awarded approximately $592 million in grants to its four constituent groups – public schools, libraries, institutions of higher education, and public, non-profit healthcare facilities.

 The agency receives approximately $150 million per year in revenues from telecommunications assessments to disburse over a ten-year period.