November 19, 1998
Contact:
Press Contact: Yvonne French (202) 707-9191
School contact: Principal Valoria E. Baylor (202) 645-3440
MEDIA ADVISORY:
LIBRARY TO DONATE $34,000 IN COMPUTERS AND OTHER MATERIALS TO
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Equipment Replaces Stolen Items
WHO: Deputy Librarian of Congress Donald Scott
WHAT: Will tour classrooms where the Library has
installed its surplus computers and address a
Head Start-fifth grade musical assembly
celebrating "American Education Week"
WHEN: Friday, November 20
9 a.m.: tour of classrooms
9:30 a.m.: three-minute address at beginning
of assembly
WHERE: Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School,
Sixth St. and Alabama Ave. S.E.
WHY: Burglars stole computer equipment from the
school the weekend of October 17-18
HOW: The Library is donating surplus equipment to the
school under President George Bush's 1992
Executive Order 12821 improving math and science
education and amended by President Bill Clinton in
1996 as Executive Order 12999 ensuring educational
technology opportunities.
BACKGROUND:
The Library of Congress has donated $6 million in computer
equipment since 1994, mostly to schools in the District, Maryland
and Virginia, but also as far away as Montana. The Library is
currently working on a donation of equipment to a school in
California's Mojave Desert.
The donation to Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School
marks the second time the Library has donated equipment to a
school that has been vandalized. The first was in 1994 to Scott
Montgomery Elementary School in the District.
At Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School on the weekend of
October 17-18, vandals broke into the school and took four
computers, seven televisions, 17 VCRs, two musical keyboards,
three CD players and a tape recorder and damaged seven
televisions.
The Library is donating a fax machine, 10 personal computers
and color monitors, four correcting electric typewriters and six
cases of carpet tiling. The value of the donation is $34,000.
# # #
PR 98-190
11/19/98
ISSN 0731-3527