BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
The National Trail Local School District in Paris, Ohio, is a small, rural district in a farming community where education funds are tight. Yet, thanks to the efforts of District Technology Coordinator Brian Pool, students there are thriving in the digital age with some help from Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services and DOD Computers for Learning.
Pool has long been a driving force behind the district’s embrace of the CFL program, which has long offered surplus government technology to schools.
In 2003, while serving as a C-141 pilot in the Air Force Reserve, Pool joined the district. Two years later, he was introduced to CFL while working with his unit at Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. During a project involving the local Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (now a DLA Disposition Services field site), he discovered the program and immediately enrolled his district.
“When I started, the entire district had about 100 computers, including those for teachers and staff,” Pool said. “The only computers we had were on teachers’ desks. We had middle school and high school computer labs, but no computers in classrooms. So, DOD CFL, for our school district, has really been a godsend.”
In the early years, Pool focused on placing four computers in every classroom to create mini-labs and to establish a full computer lab within a school library.
“We went from one computer lab in the high school to four, and that’s back when we were using [cathode ray tube monitors] and desktops,” Pool said.
Since then, the district has replaced every student personal computer and staff workstation four times. About eight years ago, Pool began acquiring laptops through the program, enabling the district to issue one laptop to each high school and middle school student.
“My advanced technologies class became a laptop repair class,” Pool said.
Students in his classes recondition laptops received through the program, installing solid-state drives and batteries—usually the only components needed to make the laptops usable. When accidents occur, Pool’s students repair them.
“My students repair and service, on average, 10 laptops a day,” he said. “They fix broken screens, keyboards, memory—everything we get from DOD CFL.”
Pool teaches two classes of A+ Hardware and one Advanced Technologies course.
“A+ Hardware students learn about and work on PCs, rebuilding them,” he said. “Advanced Tech students work on laptops, printers, peripherals, Wi-Fi, and networking.”
The program has also helped the district build an advanced server infrastructure. Pool and his students salvaged components from virtual servers acquired from the DLA Disposition Services office in San Antonio.
“We’ve got probably one of the best server farms for a school our size in the country, and it’s all built from DOD CFL components,” Pool said.
The program has made a lasting impact on the district and its students.
“A large number of my former students have gone into computer science and [information technology],” Pool said. “I don’t think we’d have any of them—or very few—go on to college and become IT professionals or programmers if we didn’t have the program we have here.”
Click here to learn about the Computers for Learning program.