Money will help schools with math, technology

Citrus County schools will get $520,331, and Pinellas schools will get $1.25-million. They are the only area districts receiving the federal money.

By STEPHEN HEGARTY

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 11, 2000

Schools in Pinellas and Citrus counties stand to get more than $1.75-million in federal money for new computers and training to help low-performing elementary schools with math instruction, and for other technology projects.

Pinellas schools will get $1.25-million for technology projects, and Citrus County will get $520,331 for a proposal called "Technology for Learning in the Classroom."

Some of the technology money will be shared with a private school in St. Petersburg. Academy Prep, a school for disadvantaged boys, will share in a $659,850 project designed to improve math skills.

Pinellas and Citrus are the only two Tampa Bay area school districts to receive an award from the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund, a $2-billion federal program.

In all, 31 projects around the state got some part of Florida's $18.1-million portion of the federal technology fund.

Oddly, some of the "low-performing" schools listed in the project proposals -- schools that earned D ratings from the state -- now are high-performing schools, according to the latest round of test scores.

For instance, in Pinellas County, Southern Oak Elementary was listed as one of the schools with low math scores and a high percentage of students eligible for the federal lunch program, an indicator of poverty. Since the grant application, Southern Oak improved its math score by 21 points and improved from a D rating to an A.

The inclusion of Academy Prep in Pinellas' proposal, which was done previously, was encouraged by the federal guidelines, which require that applicants "provide children enrolled in private schools . . . with an opportunity to participate."

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