Va. School District Safely Connect Libraries to Internet

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For a great deal less money $an setting up dial-up lines, Lee County School District linked its schools to each other and to the Internet through a Wide Area Network and Proxy Server.

Lee County School District, with more than 4,100 students in 13 K-12 schools, is one of the poorest districts in Virginia. Tucked into the westernmost corner of the state, right on the Tennessee border, Lee County has a composite index of 17 percent, mean mg the county is expected to pay only 17 percent of the cost of educating its children.

To cope with rising costs and declining state funding, the district needed an inexpensive source of teaching materials. The solution? Installing a wide area network (WAN) to link its school libraries and setting up a Proxy Server to ensure quick and economical Internet access. As an added bonus, the Proxy Server enables the schools to monitor activity and block access to inappropriate Web sites.

The district overcame its financial hurdles with technical support from Educational Technology, LLC; a WAN connection from Bell Atlantic; a technology grant from Virginia; and creative planning by a committee of parents, teachers and administrators. It obtained the Proxy …