Just heard this as the top news on CBS at 11PDT

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/19991027/tc/y2k_schools_2.html

Wednesday October 27 11:19 AM ET

Study: Schools Unprepared for Y2K

By ANJETTA McQUEEN AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - In the worst-case scenario, some of the nation's schoolchildren could return from winter vacation to find heating systems, cafeteria freezers and security systems failing - or kaput.

With two months to go, more than a third of the nation's schools and colleges remain unprepared for the Year 2000's effect on computers and other technology, the Education Department said today.

But the schools surveyed offer another scenario: 96 percent of districts with kindergarten through 12th grade and 97 percent of colleges contend they'll be ready by Jan. 1.

Officials ultimately estimate that 15 percent of the nation's schools, or 12,000 schools, would not be ready for the Year 2000 problem and may have to delay reopening after winter vacation.

John Koskinen, the president's Council on Year 2000 Conversion chairman, said that in the next two months schools and colleges need to concentrate on fixing their systems, making sure they are independently tested and developing contingency plans in case of failure.

``Initially schools looked at it as a software processing problem,'' Koskinen said. ``It has taken a long time for local educators to realize how much they rely on education technology for their operation.''

Despite optimistic predictions for overall preparations for the Year 2000 problem - also called Y2K - the Clinton administration has warned that schools, some cities, small hospitals and small businesses are foot-dragging on contingency plans for computer failures.

The Y2K problem occurs because some computer programs, especially older ones, might fail when the date changes to 2000. The programs, originally written to recognize only the last two digits of a year, could read the digits ``00'' as 1900 instead of 2000.

Officials acknowledge that Y2K-related failures in schools would have little direct impact on teaching and learning, outside of lessons involving information technology. But the failures could have the worst effect where schools are least prepared, on critical operations such as school building heating and security.

``It boggles the mind that these planners couldn't foresee the Year 2000 was quickly approaching,'' said William L. Rukeyser, coordinator of Learning in the Real World, a Woodland, Calif.-based group often critical of ballooning school technology expenditures. ``Reading a calendar is not brain surgery.''

An Education Department survey last spring found that just 28 percent of the more than 3,500 school districts surveyed had reached compliance, and only 30 percent of roughly 2,100 colleges had all of their systems Y2K ready. Then, many school districts and colleges predicted their Y2K work and contingency planning would have been finished by Oct. 1, 1999.

But the follow-up survey conducted at the beginning of this month suggests there's little for the lagging schools to do now but prepare as best they can for the glitches.

Without the fixes, any information that relies on a date could experience a year's-end glitch. Conceivably, heating systems could fail, cafeteria freezers could shut down, teacher paychecks could be held up and student records could be corrupted.

The survey is based on a random sampling of 1,200 of the nation's local education agencies and 1,600 colleges contacted by mail in the first week of September. Almost 1,000 school districts and more than 1,350 colleges responded by participating in a phone survey.

Make a name for yourself online!

-- Helium (Heliumavid@yahoo.com), October 27, 1999

Answers

The heard starts to stir: FOR THE CHILDREN

The children won't have school, Bad Y2K Bad Y2K...

*gag*

Things will get worse before they get better.....

-- Helium (Heliumavid@yahoo.com), October 27, 1999.

In many communities, the schools are the emergency shelters. If their heating (and cooking, and restroom facilities) doesn't work...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), October 27, 1999.

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

http://currents.net/newstoday/99/10/28/news15.html

Daily News

Y2K Closing 1,000 Schools

By David McGuire, Newsbytes.

October 28, 1999

More than 1,000 schools nationwide will likely have to shut their doors to fix Y2K-related failures after Jan. 1, said Department of Education Deputy Secretary Mike Smith at a press conference today.

"I'd be very surprised if somewhere on the order of 1,000 to 1,500 schools" did not have to shut down in order to fix Y2K-related failures, Smith said, citing the somewhat bleak results of a recent Department of Education survey.

While 96 percent of school districts say that they will complete fixes to their "mission-critical" systems before Jan. 1, only 86 percent of those surveyed indicated that they would complete Y2K fixes to their schools' infrastructures before the date rollover.

So while district-based payroll and computer systems will likely be up and running as of Jan. 1, many school-based heating, security and telecommunications systems could go down, Smith said.

Also, roughly a third of the school districts surveyed are reporting that they will complete their Y2K fixes in the fourth quarter of 1999, leaving precious little room for error, Smith said.

The nation's top Y2K watchdog agreed with Smith's assessment. "A lot of school systems are cutting it very close, a lot of them aren't going to make it and some of them are going to be in difficulty," said John Koskinen, chair of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion.

Many of the school districts at the greatest risk for Y2K-related failures are "moving their (starting) dates now to give themselves some running room," Koskinen told Newsbytes. Most schools are set to reconvene following their holiday breaks on Monday, Jan. 3. Many districts have already announced their intention to roll back that date.

Both Koskinen and Smith stressed the need for school districts to continue working on remediation efforts and also to develop and test Y2K contingency plans.

The Department of Education also surveyed colleges and universities, finding that, while 97 percent of the nation's institutions anticipate completing fixes to mission-critical systems before Jan. 1, only 85 percent expect to complete infrastructure fixes before the date roll over.

The Department has established a program to pay the tuition fees and costs of students whose federal financial aid checks get misdirected or lost as a result of Y2K failures, Smith said.

Also on the "higher education" front, Koskinen pointed out the potential for the "loss of a lot of research data" stored on college professors' individual computers.

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-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), October 27, 1999.