WNBC TV, Channel 4

[Broadcast February 9, 1984]

What you are seeing is the Kew Gardens neighborhood in action. These kids at P.S. 99 are getting the benefits of a modern computer education because the neighbors joined together to do what the financially strapped school system could not.

To understand how computer learning for these elementary school children became a reality, you need to know that in this neighborhood, the small public school is a center of neighborhood life.

JUDITH WILLIAMS:   The people have continued to stay here. They may have graduated from here, their neighbors graduated from here, their first child did, their second child.

RALPH PENZA:   Parents, with neighborhood support, slowly raised the money for the expensive computer equipment. It took 8 years of candy sales membership drives, and bake sales, with the kids pitching in.

MARGE ZAPOLSKI:   Sometimes they'd dig into their own piggybanks just to help support us.

SHEILA STEINFELD:   We did very well this year.

RALPH PENZA:   I see you raised $150 in one spot.

SHEILA STEINFELD:   Yes, we did.

RALPH PENZA:   Parent, Sheila Steinfeld, showed me how one computer after another was purchased as the money came in from those fund drives.

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