PRINCIPAL of the Windward Road Primary School Norman Malcolm is aiming to have a laptop computer in each of the 39 classrooms at the institution.
Malcolm made the announcement as he collected a cheque, valued at $416,000, which was donated by Air Jamaica Heartbeat, during a handing-over ceremony during devotion at the East Kingston-based school on Wednesday.
“We are working on a project to put a laptop in every classroom,” Malcolm told the Jamaica Observer.
The Windward Road Primary School population of students is numbered at 1,600 and although the school already has a computer lab equipped with desktop computers and wireless Internet, Malcolm said the drive to have laptop computers in classrooms was geared at keeping apace with modern technology.
The school created waves when it copped four straight titles in the Junior Schools Challenge Quiz in the first seven years of the competition and a number of students have been awarded top scholarships due to their excellent performance in the Grade Six Achievement Test.
The money handed over yesterday was the latest in a series of benevolent acts toward the school by Air Jamaica Heartbeat, which is a staff-based charity group that adopted the school during the heyday of the former national airline.
The group had embarked upon a number of fund-raising initiatives and yesterday’s donation represented the remainder of money that was left in a bank account opened to lodge the money which was raised from cake sales and other events.
Malcolm pointed out that not all the cash would be used in the laptop initiative as there were other immediate needs.
“We are going to use a portion of it to assist needy children in our breakfast and lunch programmes,” he said.