State Tennessee

Policy Abs: Goals 2000: Educate America Act, 21st Century Challenge Plan. The Upper East Tennessee Education Cooperative (UETEC) is a regional organization of schools with a common purpose: the sharing of resources and talents to offer unique educational opportunities for students of all ages in the region.

Wilson County is both an urban and rural school systems with 10,695 students in 14 schools. It has deployed elements of a system-wide technology and networking plan within the last year, utilizing -- particularly in the network -- no “additional” funding.

Connect Tennessee Students is a nonprofit group working in partnership with the state and private businesses to foster technology use.

Policy Adm: Tennessee State Legislature

Tennessee State Department of Education

Policy: Since July 1993, Tennessee’s State legislature has appropriated approximately $100 million exclusively for education technology. Tennessee Education Network (TEN) will be a comprehensive statewide administrative, professional, and instructional network, which will provide for the transmission of voice, data, image, and video. Tennessee classrooms will be connected to TEN through a series of easy-to-use local and wide area networks.

Upper East Tennessee Education Cooperative The Upper East Tennessee Education Cooperative (UETEC) is a regional organization of schools with a common purpose: the sharing of resources and talents to offer unique educational opportunities for students of all ages in the region. The UETEC is a voluntary confederation of fifteen (15) city and county school systems. They are joined in this relationship for the purpose of increasing their capability to improve educational services.

UETEC officials saw the vast potential for resource sharing through distance learning -- the connection of multiple sites over a technologically advanced fiber-optic infrastructure. With technical and funding assistance from the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the State of Tennessee, the concept became a reality. At the beginning of the 1991 school year, Tennessee’s first multi-county distance learning video network sprang to life over fiber-optic facilities provided by Sprint United Telephone.

Wilson County Schools

Wilson County is both an urban and rural school system with 10,695 students in 14 schools. It has deployed elements of a system-wide technology and networking plan within the last year, utilizing -- particularly in the network -- no “additional” funding. The work has been done essentially “in house” through the efforts of the system’s technology coordinators. These tasks included:

• Local Area Network wiring
• Training of Wilson County 21st Century Classroom teachers
• TEN Internet (“Virtual School”) training of 150 additional teachers
• TEN Internet training of school principals and school board members
• Telephone/modem access for fifty-one 21st Century Classrooms
• Training of teachers and secretaries on the school system’s student information system
• Automation for the scheduling of substitute teachers
• Two (soon to be three) interactive video classrooms using ISDN and desktop video technology

Connect Tennessee Students is a nonprofit group working in partnership with the state and private businesses to foster technology use. Its initiatives include encouraging local businesses to give $2 per student to schools to reimburse them for their Internet costs.

In FY 98 and FY 99, Tennessee budgeted $7M a year for education technology from the state's general fund.

Reimbursement conditions: NA

Individual Reimbursement condition: NA

Contact: Jackie Shrago
State Education Agency Technology Contact
Phone: 615-532-1229
E-mail: shragoj@ten-nash.ten.k12.tn.us
State Education Agency Web Site: www.state.tn.us/education/

Number of Students: 905,860
Number of Teachers: 51,976