Emerging Links is a fusion of experiments conducted in Indianapolis and Philadelphia, says Yaworsky, the chief technology officer. Indianapolis schools passed out computers. Philadelphia schools engaged the community in helping refurbish them, and then passed them out. Pittsburgh got students and computer contractors to refurbish computers, had community organizations help out with tech support, got Comcast and Verizon to provide affordable connections and assigned its own program manager, Monica Palmer, to create a parent-education component with the guidance of Dr. Catalina Laserna of Harvard University’s Extension Program. All of that was aimed at closing the digital divide and the chasm between parents and their children’s schools.

No sooner were the computers connected than the e-mails started flying. At Burgwin, the involved teacher and administrators “got 65 or 75 e-mails over the last six weeks from parents,” said principal Cindi Muehlbauer at the June wrap-up.

“The teachers understand that this is a new thing for parents, and they don’t have to respond to every e-mail,” says Madell Dobrushin, the district’s relationship manager for technology. The teachers answer the important ones.

The teachers in-volved in the pilot effort weren’t complaining about the e-barrage. “The last month-and-a-half or two months, the relationship I have built with my parents is tremendous,” said Chelsea Glover, a third-grade teacher at Clayton Elementary, at the wrap-up session.

The parents who attended the wrap-up seemed energized, too. One raved about being able to use Dashboard to keep up with her five kids’ grades and schedules. Another noted that Emerging Links has made her a little poorer—because she pays her kids $20 for every A grade.
One of the e-mailing parents was Cynthia Simpson, of North Side’s Perry Hilltop, whose son Jarrod was part of the Clayton class that got computers. “If I e-mailed [Glover], she would respond,” says Simpson. “With the kids knowing you have access to the teacher, it sort of calms them a little bit.”

Jarrod has faced some challenges in his short educational career, Simpson says. She doesn’t know whether it was the computer or her engagement with the teacher, but he finished third grade with a flourish. “He made honor roll last time,” she says. “I had to go buy him a tape recorder.”

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