Tracy Press

A Palo Alto tech company wants to give $17,550 worth of computers to school.

A Palo Alto tech company donated $17,550 worth of computers to Freiler Elementary School.

It’s one of two donations — the other a $935 grant from retail giant Wal-Mart — that Tracy Unified School District trustees are set to approve at Tuesday night’s board meeting.

Instead of chucking the old desktops into a recycling center, the company Roche Palo Alto LLC decided to turn them over to a school to recycle them in what they thought was a more practical way, Roche spokesman Patrick Detcher said.

“This way, it’s like they’re getting a second life,” he said, adding that the company gives away old computers to schools every few years.

But a Roche employee’s child attends Freiler, Detcher said. It was the Freiler parent who asked the company to give the computers to the Tracy school.

What’s in store for a different Tracy school is another topic up for discussion at the Tuesday night meeting.

Cheryl Dominichelli, principal of the under-construction John C. Kimball High School, will talk about how to shape the institution’s academic and athletic curriculum and safety.

The school is still set to open for the 2009-10 school year. A planning committee, led by Dominichelli, is tossing around ideas on how to create a signature school culture for what will be Tracy’s third traditional high school.

The school will run four academies, dubbed “academic pathways”: one each for health sciences, math communications, life skills, and construction technology and management.

Dominichelli said she’ll also talk about what sports the school will offer.

Also on the agenda
• Trustees will consider whether to pay fellow board member Gregg Crandall for a meeting he missed Aug. 12 due to illness. Trustees get a $400 monthly stipend, and there are two regular board meetings a month. Trustees can still get paid when they miss a meeting, though, if the board votes the absence was “due to hardship deemed acceptable by the board of education.”

• Trustees will consider a $7,000 contract with a consultant who specializes in teacher training. For the past several years, West Coast Center for Education Excellence has taught instructors at Kelly Elementary School how to better their math and English instruction. Hiring the company is one way the district is trying to meet state and federal standardized test benchmarks, a school administrator said.

• Trustees will consider whether to pay up to $4,500 for a psychotherapist to work with a mentally disabled student.

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written by Thinker , September 07, 2008

too bad those computers can't go to a Title 1 (low income/ 2nd Lang Learners) school, where it could improve the district-wide test scores. That way everone benefits, even the homeowner who has to disclosure TUSD's Performance Improvement (PI) status.

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written by Dave Hardesty , September 09, 2008

I would like a followup to this article to find out if TUSD takes the computers.

I tried to set something like this up with Lockheed and also LLNL and was told by TUSD they didn't accept used equipment donations.

Most big businesses rotate their computers out every three years to keep up with the latest in technology.

But that doesn't mean these machines cannot be used for student research on the web or use them as word processors and spread sheet processors for their classwork.

Ideally you would want all the same model for maintenance purposes but most large companies only use one model at a time until they make their three year changeout.

There also use to be an outfit in Oklahoma that was a repository for used machines that could be redistributed to schools needing such equipment. I wonder if they are still in existance?

Dave Hardesty

Dave Hardesty