Donations Pour In for Greenfield School Computers

Greenfield MA gets a pretty bad rap for its schools. I remember well a friend who worked in the high school and was so miserable he almost gave up teaching. Then he found himself a job at Frontier and has been happier ever since. The school committee makes the news a lot, and there seems to be turmoil and funding arguments quite often. Despite this grim outlook, there was a very hopeful story in today’s Recorder about generous donations of computers recently.

First, 50 used Dells with Windows XP (way better than Vista!) were given by an anonymous donor. Then Greenfield Savings Bank threw in 50 hard drives. Now more than 100 keyboards, and assorted mice are coming in from a Boston company, who heard about the group and their website . I always love the power of the web to influence givers.

Now Beth Lorenz, a local car dealer, has offered up space in her showroom on Federal St. to store even more donated loot. Michael Phillips, the grass-roots group’s founder, says he thinks that by now they can replace all of the 7-9 year old computers that are running the terrible Windows 2000 program over to 3-5 year old XP machines.

At the end this means that most classrooms will have their own computer, and kids won’t have to schedule time in a computer lab. And that’s progress, Greenfield style.