Woolery's mammoth

Or how about this memo, written three months later, from the physical sciences department chair to principal Watson: "Currently, if I want anything done on a computer, I must take it home to work on and then bring it back to school."

Westech's biggest job was to integrate 646 Macintosh computers with 394 Compaq computers--computers with two completely different operating systems that DISD officials had purchased for the school. By the end of the school year--one that will be remembered as being a complete technological disaster--school officials decided that the two could not be integrated. So most of the Macintosh computers were ripped out and shipped off to some other DISD school--some other fiscal black hole--and more Compaqs were ordered.

We are not advised as to the status of Townview's 21st-century computer-video system this year. And we do not care. What we care about is disproving the commonly held belief that the DISD board, rife as it is with filthy, self-serving politics, is the cause of DISD's imminent demise. We beg to differ.

"I think Jameelah learned a lot," her mother told me last week when I called to catch up on the South Africa experience. "I don't think she thought she would go somewhere and a child would be in a school and not have a book or a paper to write on."

Oh, I don't know. Try Dallas in a year or two.