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TPS Public Housing Students Will Be Receiving Computers and
Internet Access
Sojourner’s Truth Staff
Thanks to a partnership
between the Lucas County Metropolitan Housing Authority and
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD),
150 Toledo Public Schools students will soon be receiving
computers and internet access to “help them to get the
grades they need to succeed,” said Joanna White, Jones
Leadership Academy PTO president and the parent of a student
receiving a computer.
White thanked those in the
partnership and the other organizations donating supplies
and effort during an announcement on Thursday, October 3 at
Jones Leadership Academy.
Under the guidance of
“Bridging the Gap,” computers are being donated by PCs to
People while Mobile Beacon is setting up the internet hot
spots. Bridging the Gap is a national digital inclusion
program that recently moved into the Cleveland area and
“empowers community organizations,” said Daniel Valentin,
regional sales executive from Cleveland, where the program,
he said, has already provided 7,000 individuals with
computers in order “to close the homework gap.”
“We had an opportunity to
help,” said Coleena Ali, LMHA vice president of Resident
Services. “HUD and LMHA are really coming together and
providing something for our community.”
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LMHA CEO Demetria Simpson
Romules Durant, EdD, |
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The HUD program is Connect
Home USA and is intended to bridge the digital gap in the
USA, said Pamela Ashby, HUD Field Office director. “At HUD,
we are about housing people, but we are more than about
brick and mortar,” she said adding that and one in five US
students do not have access to the internet.
That divide, said Demetria
Simpson, president and CEO of LMHA, is being closed through
the new program. “We get to bridge the gap through Connect
Home.”
Romules Durant, EdD,
superintendent of TPS also praised the “great partnership”
between LMHA and TPS that is now “greater than at any other
time.” The TPS students in the program, Durant said, “are
seeing themselves elevated through technology.”
Vivian Crawford, LMHA
assistant manager of Resident Services, was the housing
authority’s driving force in putting the program together –
connecting HUD with LMHA and brining Bridging the Gap on
board. “Our goal is to make sure that every child in public
housing has access to computers and the internet,” said
Crawford.
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