School Type: Public	School Setting: Urban
Level: K-12	School Design: Traditional
Content Presented By:
Edvantia

Background Context

Demographics

Roanoke City Public Schools, in Roanoke, Virginia, is an urban school district of approximately 14,000 students. Roanoke is located in central southwest Virginia. It is situated 189 miles south-southwest of Richmond and approximately 148 miles north of the Tennessee border. The population of Roanoke is approximately 100,000 (including the surrounding county). The majority of the students come from blue collar lower socioeconomic families.

Student Racial/Ethnic Composition:

44% African American
53% White (not Hispanic)
1% Hispanic
1% Asian or Pacific Islander
1% Native American or Native Alaskan

Background

Roanoke City Public Schools operates 29 site-based schools. During the early part of the 1990s the district met strong resistance from the community when trying to consolidate smaller elementary schools. Since that time the community or "neighborhood" school concept has grown stronger.

By 1994, the school district established an "Office of Technology" and developed a $21 million dollar, ten-year budget to infuse technology into every school in the district and make technology an integral part the curriculum.

A by-product of this effort was the acknowledgment that technology could be used to improve communication with and training of the citizens of these community schools. With this idea in mind the Computing Seniors/Computing Parents Program was developed.

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This resource is developed and maintained by The Education Alliance at Brown University. Seed funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Send comments to: loom@alliance.brown.edu