By Ashley Sanders

The News staff writer

Former Woodrow Wilson Middle School students finally got new computers to replace the one’s lost one year ago.

Superintendent Johnny Brown, representatives from Apple Computers and several district employees were on hand Wednesday morning to distribute computers to the sixth grade students at Franklin Elementary School.

In the fall of 2004, students at Wilson Middle School received laptops through the Technology Immersion Pilot (TIP), a two-year grant from the Texas Education Agency, that provides access to state-of-the-art technology tools capable of engaging students and teachers in 21st century teaching and learning.

Upon hearing that the state would not replace the computers destroyed by Hurricane Rita, several Port Arthur parents pushed Senator Kyle Janek to step in and take up their cause this past June.

Because of the parent and school district involvement, TEA announced on June 15 that the TIP grant would continue for Wilson students. At that time, the campus was set to receive a little more than $871,000 from the state over the next year.

This week the district received 825 computers to be distributed to teachers and sixth, seventh and eighth grade students at Franklin Elementary and the Memorial Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Grade Campus.

According to PAISD, students are allowed to use the computers at school and take the laptops home, but they must be returned at the end of the school year.