Bend cable delivers donation

Bend Cable delivered a check for $34,485 to the Deschutes County Education Service District on Thursday, April 29.

The check paid half of the local cost for 418 computers that will be distributed to schools throughout Central Oregon.

In delivering the check, Bend Cable President William Paul Morton said that Bend Cable was investing in the future.

"These are our future employees and our future subscribers," said Morton. "We are pleased to help prepare the next generation who will take advantage of the connectivity."

The computers were assembled by Sisters High School students who are participating in the StRUT (Students Recycling Used Technology) program.

Under StRUT, the Intel Corporation donated 10,000 Pentium II computers to be dispersed through state education service districts to schools in Oregon, with 2,000 going to each congressional district in the state.

The Fred Meyer Memorial Trust added $1 million for monitors and other hardware.

Local donations were set at $165 for each machine.

That is where Bend Cable entered the picture. The company matched local Central Oregon donations so that each school district could get all of the machines they qualified for under the program.

One of the criteria was that teachers show in lesson plans how the computers would be used to enhance the curriculum.

Of the 418 total in Central Oregon, Sisters School District received 197 machines, Redmond received 178 and Bend School District will receive 43, according to Crook/Deschutes ESD Director Dennis Dempsey

(Dempsey is also half-time principal of Sisters High School, through the end of this year).

After accepting the symbolic check, Sisters students began loading computers for delivery to the Redmond District.

Since Sisters students also learned to assemble the computers, they benefitted in more ways than one from StRUT.