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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector-Section: News
'Too-good' Net hurts schools
Feds funded high-end gear using phone taxTHE NEW YORK TIMESWASHINGTON - When the El Paso school system wanted to upgrade its Internet connections three years ago, it tapped into a federal program that offers assistance for such projects.The program paid IBM $35 million to build a network powerful enough to serve a small city. But the network would be so sophisticated that the 90-school district could not run it without help.Foreseeing the problem, IBM charged the district an additional $27 million, paid by the federal program, to build a lavish maintenance call-in center to keep the network running. The center operated for nine months. Then, with no more money to support it, IBM dismantled it and left town.The federal effort to help poor schools connect to the Internet, the E-rate program, which collects a tax from all American phone users to distribute $2.25 billion a year to such schools and libraries, wasted enormous sums as El Paso built its extravagant network in the 2001-02 school year, according to documents and federal lawmakers.Cases in Florida, San FranciscoBut the problems have not been there alone. In Brevard County, Fla., school officials used E-rate money to install a $1 million network server, a powerful device more suited to the needs of a multinational corporation, in a 650-pupil elementary school. And just three weeks ago in San Francisco, a subsidiary of the computer giant NEC agreed to plead guilty to two federal felony counts related to the program.Across the nation in recent months - in El Paso and in New York and Pennsylvania, in Puerto Rico and Atlanta, in Milwaukee and Chicago - investigations or audits of the program have turned up not only waste but also bid-rigging and other fraud, according to lawmakers and investigators. A report issued last week by the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the E-rate program, said 42 criminal investigations were under way.Hearings open todayToday Congress is to open hearings on all that has gone wrong. The hearings will be held by the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations.The E-rate program has many enthusiastic backers."Every mammoth government program has problems," said Gregg Downey, editor of eSchool News, a paper that covers educational technology. "The sloth, the waste and the cases of outright fraud shouldn't be a reason to get rid of a program that's doing a lot of good. This is a program that helps schools serve students better through technology."
"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I
can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will
not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do,
I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God,
I will do." - Edward Everett Hale
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