Place: Watson Middle School Year: 2002

The Watson Middle School is an alternative program for bilingual students. It shares facilities with an elementary school located in an inner-city neighborhood in a large metropolitan center. The program was started in 1995 with 100 students. It has grown consistently and is regarded as a major success in the district. The current population is 300 students.

The director, who reports directly to a district superintendent, administers Watson. Thirteen teachers are assigned to the school. The director, who started the school, feels very strongly that the success of the program can be attributed to its small size. Though very supportive of the district establishing similar programs in other schools, she does not feel the program should grow any further at Watson.

The director has been very supportive of computer education and established a central computer laboratory when the school first opened. Presently it houses 25 microcomputers. A high speed Internet connection was added to the lab in 1998. One teacher who previously taught mathematics has served as the computer coordinator and has done an excellent job. The computer facilities are well integrated into mathematics and science instruction, and all students receive some computer instruction at least twice a week. The average class size is 25 so that during computer instruction, students are able to work individually on a computer. The director feels that the major problem with the central laboratory is that it is simply a large classroom that was converted into a computer laboratory by rearranging desks and tables. Renovations have never been made to the area although renovation funds have been requested in each of the last 5 years. While generally supportive of most of her budget requests, the district superintendent has not been able to allocate funds for a renovation.

After attending a citywide workshop for administrators on integrating computing into the curriculum in spring 2001, the director has been considering putting equipment into the regular classrooms. After discussing the idea with the teaching staff, she detected a good deal of support and enthusiasm on their part, especially because she had indicated that she is committed to continuing and expanding several staff development workshops that focus on computer education. The computer coordinator also backed the idea of putting equipment into each of the classrooms, but he raised several legitimate concerns regarding the physical facilities, security, and the overall management of the hardware and software. The coordinator further suggested that maybe the best approach would be to have both a central facility and some equipment in each of the classrooms.

It is May 2002, and the district superintendent has just informed the director that he is confident that approximately $125,000 will be available for renovating the computer facilities. The cost for improving the physical facilities (air-conditioning, electrical rewiring, window treatment, etc.) will be $70,000, and $55,000 can be used for purchasing new equipment and furniture. He would like a proposal from her regarding how she would use these funds. He wants to present it to the district's equipment and facilities planning subcommittee on June 1.

Assuming that you are the director of the Watson Middle School, what would you include in your proposal? To help you with this, further assume that you would like to maintain a smaller central computer facility and to provide equipment in each of the 12 classrooms in the school. Critical decisions need to be made regarding the number of microcomputer stations to be kept in the central laboratory, the number of stations to be established In each classroom, security, and other physical requirements. You are also concerned that if you radically change the nature of your previous request, which was to renovate the central facilities only, you might jeopardize receiving any of the renovation funds. (You need to create a brief rational for each decision you make.)

Things to consider:

• To wire a classroom costs $1,000 plus $125 for each "drop."

• Computers outside of the lab have an infrastructure cost of $3500 for each 24.

• Computers cost $1,100 each fully configured with the district's software installed and 5 years of service and parts.