Larry Mynars, library media center teacher at Elizabeth Blackwell Elementary School in Schaumburg, Illinois, explains why his school considered community interests in its technology plan. Excerpted from videotaped interview for the video series Learning with Technology, program #3, Planning to Plug In (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1996).

"Our school has 1,200 families, 800 of those families do not have children in our school. They're taxpayers, so they have no idea of what we're doing in here, why we're doing it. They just know that they're spending money. Our challenge will be to incorporate these people in the community kind of philosophy and give them some return from this school for their dollar to provide some things for them that they can't get at home that we can give them here at school and to justify the money, so that down the line when we go to expand even more and ask for referendums, we've got these people behind us."

This Critical Issue was written by Alan November, senior partner at Educational Renaissance Planners in Evanston, Illinois, and Carolyn Staudt, an educational consultant, in conjunction with Mary Ann Costello, a free-lance writer, and Lynne Huske, Pathways coordinator at North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.

Development and production of this Critical Issue were supported in part by the North Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium.

Date posted: 1996
Revised: 1998