[02/23/01] Dana Road Elementary will get 20 Gateway computers and one printer from PowerUP, a non-profit program designed to train children for the Internet age.

Forty-nine other schools in the state, including A.W. Watson Elementary in Claiborne County, will also receive PowerUP technology grants.

“It’s going to be of tremendous value to us,” said Martha Roberts, theme coordinator at Dana Road. “We are blessed to have gotten this.”

The Corporation for National and Community Service, one of PowerUP’s partners, will award $12.5 million in grants to eligible organizations across the nation to support technology education. Mississippi will receive $1.1 million of the money, along with $2.5 million from PowerUP to equip and staff 50 school computer labs in the state.

Roberts said Dana Road’s computers will be installed next month, and the lab will be supervised by an AmeriCorps member. The lab will be used by Dana Road’s 705 students and will also be open one night a week to the community. AmeriCorps members and PowerUP have joined to form PowerPALS, a program that trains students, parents and teachers to use new technology and enhance their existing computer skills.

Dana Road’s computers will be used to build the word processing and Internet skills of the school’s kindergarten through fourth-grade students, Roberts said. Opened in 1999 under the School Choice plan, Dana Road is a theme school that focuses on writing, communication and technology.

Vicksburg Warren School District Superintendent Donald Oakes will attend the Mississippi PowerPALS/PowerUP kickoff today at 1 p.m. at Nichols Middle School in Canton.

“We’re just glad we’re going to get this grant, and we’re looking forward to implementing it,” Oakes said.

Sen. Trent Lott will also be at the program in Canton. Other Mississippians who will attend the kickoff include Juanita Sims Doty of Jackson, appointed by Lott as a board member of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and Bobbi Barrows of Picayune, winner of this year’s Corporation for National and Community Service’s Getting Things Done Award.