[ale] Open Source in schools

[James P. Kinney III]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have an opportunity to possibly affect the DeKalb County school
system's purchasing. There is an open hearing on the school system's
budget. There are two meetings scheduled. One is for April 16 the other
is for April 30. 

After the fiasco of the DoJ vs. Microsoft, RedHat offered up a better
solution than the Redmond remedy,
 http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/press/2001/press_usschools/

I know there are others on this list that would argue for distro X or Y
or Z, and those arguments have merit.

But RedHat made the offer (not SUSE, not Mandrake, not Slackware or any
others), they are financially in pretty good shape, and they have name
recognition outside the geek realms of LUGs. 

I will be getting a copy of the budget from the school system and
digging out the IT license line item. I will also be contacting RedHat
to make arrangement to get a document offering the package to DeKalb
County Schools as per their public offer in the URL above.

If anyone is willing to pitch-in on this, please contact me ASAP as time
is short and I also have to work.

Also, this group has talked often about getting a school going on Linux.
I have, unfortunately, been unable to attend the school-Linux sessions
that occurred in Kennesaw. I am asking for the assistance of that group
of Linux'ers in a vague way to perhaps manage to provide some admin
assistance to the school system in setting up this process. I'm not sure
how to put it, but I know that the schools will need help. Half the PC's
in my daughters middle school are offline at any given time due to
software problems. I know a Linux kiosk computer setup would solve that
problem.

Also, if there are any DeKalb County residents (i.e. TAXPAYERS!) who
would like to see their property tax better spent in the schools, please
attend the meetings.

April 16 7:30 pm
DeKalb High School of Technology south campus
3303 Panthersville Rd. Decatur

April 30 7:30 pm
Georgia Perimeter College central campus
Jim Cherry Learning Resources Auditorium
555 North Indian Creek Dr. Clarkston

The budget is expected to be approved by the school board at the second
meeting. So the first meeting is the crucial one to get the gears
spinning. 

-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 

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