Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 7, 1994                   TAG: 9409090025
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY  
SOURCE: New River Valley bureau
DATELINE: PULASKI                                LENGTH: Short

TEACHERS CAN BUY THEIR OWN CUT-RATE LAPTOPS

School officials have been negotiating with IBM on prices for the purchases. The plan will be presented to the county School Board when it meets at the board office at 7 p.m. Thursday.

If the board approves the plan, information will be sent to all teachers. Those who are interested will be invited to a briefing and a demonstration of the computers, and then will be eligible to sign up to buy them.

No county funds will be involved in the plan. The possibility of a large amount of computer purchases was used in negotiating a price affordable to teachers through installment payments.

One of the main recommendations to the School Board of a technology research group last spring was finding ways to equip teachers with their own computers.

The school system's technology plan will be used as an example for other interested school districts. A representative of the state Department of Education recently contacted Jim Sandidge, one of those involved in Pulaski County's plan, asking permission to do this.

In other business at its meeting Thursday, the School Board will receive a report on school opening for 1994-95 with up-to-date enrollment information. It will also be told that the Pulaski County Melodies, the county's elementary schools choir, is among those invited from across the state to perform at the State Music Convention in November.