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Request for Laptops for Monarch High School Students

Following is a guest post from Lura Vernon, President of the Monarch High School PTSO. Lura is also a good friend, contributor to Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur, mother of two awesome young women, and wife of Todd Vernon, CEO of VictorOps. 

Lura’s request is for laptops for Monarch High School Students. Any amount will do – 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, or even 100. If you have any extra, please email me and I’ll get you connected. Foundry Group is contributing a MacBook Air this week.

What can a student learn from bringing a laptop to school every day?

Sure, she can learn to make a mousetrap car by watching a YouTube video, she can watch population densities dynamically changing over time, and she can hear an unknown French word pronounced correctly without asking the teacher.

But there’s a ton of learning that happens that wouldn’t be obvious to the casual observer.

She also learns that her father would kill her if she breaks the laptop, not figuratively, but literally.  She learns that Facebook bullying can be overwhelming but also easily dealt with by simply not reading Facebook for a while.  She learns that her grades will greatly improve if she pays attention in class rather than surfing the web behind the teacher’s back.  And she learns that her parents have WAY OVERREACTED to that new Snapchat app.

Monarch High School is in its second year of requiring its students to bring a laptop to school.  It’s Principal, Dr. Jerry Anderson, has worked long hours to bring state of the art WiFi to the building, give the teachers the training, and bring the parents up to date.  Any student who’s parents couldn’t afford a laptop was provided one; all they had to do was ask.  It’s my opinion that this program will do more to improve the achievement gap between genders, races, and different learning abilities than any other program conceived by the district.

The problem?

Dr. Anderson has conducted fundraisers, partnerships with local businesses, and worked with the district to provide free refurbished computers to those who need them.  Up until now, she had the resources she needed so that all students had a laptop in school.  Unfortunately, because of a high percentage of refurbished computers that crapped out, Monarch has five students who haven’t had a laptop since the beginning of the semester.

If your business has used laptops that they are considering getting rid of, Monarch will take them!  We’ll provide you with our non-profit tax ID # and give you a receipt.

If you can help, please email me.

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January 21st, 2013     Categories: Philanthropy     Tags: , , ,
Brad Feld

Hi, I'm Brad Feld, a managing director at Foundry Group who lives in Boulder, Colorado. I invest in software and Internet companies around the US, run marathons and read a lot.

 
 
 
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