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Susan Truax
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Lily Craig
Chevron Products Company
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CHEVRON ANNOUNCES MATCHING GRANT PROGRAM FOR
CENTER STREET ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (November 18, 2002) – Chevron, El Segundo has pledged up to $15,000 to Center Street Elementary School in a matching grant program to purchase the routers, hubs and switches necessary to hard-wire the school’s computers to the El Segundo Unified School District’s network. How will it work? Chevron will match each contribution dollar-for-dollar until the $30,000 goal is met.
Center Street School PTA is working with school administrators to coordinate the campaign to attract matching funds for the Chevron grant. Parents, friends and community members are encouraged to donate toward the Chevron matching grant campaign. “Like Chevron, many companies will match dollar for dollar the donations made by their employees, so there’s a real opportunity to make this happen for Center Street,” said Gary Yesavage, Chevron Refinery’s General Manager.
With funds contributed by the El Segundo Educational Foundation, two years ago ESUSD installed a Wide Area Network (WAN) that connects its schools to each other and to the Internet. Because at that time Center Street School had not yet been modernized with Measure C school bond funds, it was determined to be more cost effective to install a temporary wireless network at that campus. Plans for the school’s hard-wire connectivity were put on hold until renovation work commenced.
“You have to access space in the building interiors to run the cables for a hard-wire network connection,” said school principal Shannon Wilkins. “It just didn’t make sense to poke holes in our classrooms two years before our modernization project. In the meantime, the wireless network has really worked for us.”
Wilkins said the wireless solution allowed Center Street to be connected to the District’s WAN when it was installed at the other schools. The alternative was to delay the school’s connectivity until modernization work was complete.
During Center Street’s modernization project, which is close to completion, network wiring was installed in all buildings on campus. All that’s missing is the connectivity hardware, including hubs, switches, and routers.
“We are very grateful to Chevron for initiating this generous matching grant program to complete our network,” Wilkins said. “When our new equipment is installed, we will have the best of both worlds: the capabilities of hard-wired connection and the flexibility of a wireless WAN.”
Yesavage is confident the community, especially the Center Street parents, will come out in force to support Chevron’s matching grant campaign. “We know that the Center Street administrators, teachers and students are really looking forward to the day when the school will be wired to the District network, and we’re proud of the part our company and the community will play in making it happen for our students and teachers,” he said.
Donations to Chevron’s matching grant program can be mailed to Center Street School, 700 Center Street, El Segundo, CA 90245. Checks for tax-deductible donations can be made out to Center Street School PTA.