DISTRICT SHORT-CIRCUITS HIGH-TECH EVENT.

Byline: Paul Finman Special to the Daily News

Volunteers and sponsors throughout California participated in a high-tech barn raising March 9 called NetDay96 to wire classrooms for Internet access.

As a parent interested in contributing time and money to improve local technical education, I was disappointed by the minimal local activity on NetDay.

I feel that the Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) and other districts have squandered a cost-free opportunity to build educational momentum at a time when school districts are begging taxpayers for a school bond issue.

Not too long ago, I saw the previous CVUSD superintendent confidently inform a group of unhappy parents that ``the law'' required the district to build an impressive administrative building during a time of painful classroom budget cuts. At that time, the superintendent was earning $116,000 annually, and he retired shortly afterward with an $80,000 pension. During the explanation of budget cuts, a car alarm sounded outside and the district business manager left to check her new Lexus.

A teacher told me afterward that ``the law'' did require the administrative building budget be spent on ``physical facilities,'' but the district could have targeted the money for teachers and students rather than administrators. I consider the impressive CVUSD administrative building a monument to CVUSD budget priorities and the ability of administrators to frustrate parents with ``the law.''

As a parent educated in the 1980s, I have noticed that many teachers and administrators educated during the 1960s and 1970s sincerely believe that technology has an evil influence on society and the environment. Not surprisingly, many of these people are technologically illiterate.

Some educators believe that limiting student access to technological tools helps engineer a more beautiful and egalitarian world while saving class time for important social instruction. A Luddite mentality can also block technology in our schools.

Although computers can never replace good teachers, computers can replace tenured, technologically illiterate social engineers. When classrooms are penniless, there is always an excuse for low academic achievement. When powerful technological tools are available in classrooms at a low cost, intellectual weakness in instructors can become painfully obvious.

Perhaps the most insidious barrier to bringing low-cost technology into our schools is bureaucratic opposition to the individual empowerment which technology allows. In the CVUSD, I have tried to donate the use of excellent computer equipment to the CVUSD with the simple condition that it be used to increase parental involvement and accommodate high-tech independent study for my child and other students. School board members Dorothy Beaubien, Delores Didio and Richard Newman form a pro-bureaucracy, anti-parent majority that is extremely hostile toward devolution of bureaucratic power and accommodation for meaningful parental involvement.

With these barriers toward technology, the lack of activity on NetDay96 in the CVUSD is not surprising. Until schools districts are willing to take advantage of opportunities to bring technology into the classroom at low cost, increased funding for schools will be squandered just as NetDay96 was squandered in the CVUSD.

If the public opposes increases in general funding for education while volunteering and contributing directly to classroom programs, there is a chance to get our schools on track. I hope that the CVUSD will learn how to take better advantage of direct public support for the classroom.

MEMO: Paul Finman is technical director of an electronics manufacturing firm in Camarillo and has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. The Newbury Park resident has two children who attend classes in the Conejo Valley Unified School District.