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Letters
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Business New Haven
2/21/2000
By: BNH
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Best Free Lunch in Town
When Business New Haven says, “Let's do lunch,” they do it for a gazillion of their closest business colleagues and they do it with class and humor.
Thank you once again for this year's Business & Civic Awards Luncheon (see story, page 38) and for lifting up the best and the brightest in our business community. Your efforts not only celebrate their good work but are an important reminder to us all that New Haven has much to be proud of as well as much more to do.
Thanks for lunch and for your ever present independent vices in our community. And thanks for providing a warm spot in the middle of a cold winter. It has become an event that is much anticipated and well worth attending.
- Carolyn H. Cary
Tel-Pro Associates Inc.
Hamden
Man with a Plan
I read editorials talking about the sad state of education in the city of New Haven (BNH, February 7) and a sad state it is. As a business owner in New Haven, I am embarrassed at the lack of attention given to this matter. When something is said, it is negative or complaining, no action. It is time for a call to action!
Owning a computer software training company in New Haven has taught me the need for education starting at an early age. The students in our schools are “under-technologied” due to a lack of funding. For this reason, I propose, even offer to head, the “Adopt a School” program for local businesses. Here is the plan:
1. Find local companies willing to donate money
or equipment to outfit a school with five or six PCs.
2. SNET is rolling out DSL to homes in the upcoming months. Why not include a school in the program? SNET/SBC loves publicity, so let's give it to them. Donate Internet access to the adopted school for the first 24 months with a reduced rate from there in.
3. New Horizons CLC of Greater New Haven will donate time and effort to educate not only the teachers and staff at the school, but also run a number of evening classes for the parents of the students. Classes would be held right at the school in the computer lab to show the parents what their children have access to. Courses can include “Creating a Book Report in Word” and “Using the Internet for Research.” There is a belief that not enough parents help their kids with such assignments, but the real question should be: how many parents would know where to begin?
4. Get other companies along with New Horizons to spend a Saturday wiring the school for Internet access and configuring the PCs. Even turn back to the parents and teachers like a “Habitat for Humanity” project, only “Technology for Tomorrow” instead.
5. New Horizons will allow a representative from the school attend A+ Certification and basic classes at our location to enable them to become Self-sufficient when computer problems arise. All of this at no charge. Instead of writing about what is wrong with the school system, as New Haven companies, we should be acting on it.
- Edward Hamill
President
New Horizons Computer Learning Center
of Greater New Haven
CLARIFICATION
The editorial “PC Poison for Public Schools” in the February 7 BNH mis-characterized the position of State Rep. Cameron Staples (D-96) with regard to ranking school performance on the Connecticut Mastery Tests by district. According to the February 1 New Haven Register, “If the education department does not reconsider using the index, Staples said the legislature could take up the matter this year.”
Staples, who co-chairs the education committee, says he neither said nor meant that. “It would be crazy for [the legislature] to tell the education department how it should release information,” he says. Instead, Staples says that assigning a single number average to nine test scores (reading, writing and math in each of three grades) is an imprecise and potentially misleading measurement. He advocates looking carefully at all scores in each district to see which academic areas should receive the most attention.
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