School Officials Seek $62,700 from Town Meeting to Fund Classroom Computers-September 10, 1982

Seeking to bring local students into the emerging computer age, school officials announced plans to request nearly $62,700 in funding at the upcoming special town meeting scheduled for September 20.

Proposed Computer Acquisition and Distribution Plan

The School Committee is formally proposing the purchase of 16 microcomputers to be distributed across the district’s school buildings:

• Elementary Schools: One computer for each of the five elementary schools (plus three units allocated to the Peabody School).
• Junior High Schools: One computer in each of the town’s two junior high schools.
• Norwood High School: Six computers to anchor secondary instruction.

Louis Buscone Jr., high school vice principal and head of the district’s computer education project, stated Wednesday that he anticipates securing the strong backing of the Finance Commission ahead of the September 20 special town meeting vote.

Educational Goals and Long-Term Vision

According to Buscone and high school math department chairman Al Carver, the newly acquired technology will serve a dual purpose: teaching students fundamental operational skills for high-tech machinery and providing targeted remedial assistance in core academic subjects.

School officials outlined an ambitious long-term objective to place a computer in every elementary classroom—where foundational introduction to technology should begin—with the complete rollout estimated to take between three and five years. In addition to general classroom use, educators plan to expand specialized computer instruction to students enrolled in college preparatory mathematics courses.

“Workers in almost any field will have to operate computers in the future,” Buscone emphasized, noting that the educational rollout would proceed independently of a separate municipal study exploring the purchase of larger computer systems for town data storage and financial management.

Archival Note: This article has been dynamically reconstructed from the original public record print archives of the Patriot Ledger