IBM Corp has teamed up with North Carolina’s largest public school system, in a $2m initiative to equip a proposed ‘education village’ with the latest computer and communication systems. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system was the first district to benefit from a major change in the company’s philanthropy, IBM chairman Louis Gerstner Jr said. Our charitable funds will go exclusively to school districts that are committed to fundamental reforms, Gerstner is insisting. The initiative will eventually include up to 10 school districts across the US, at a cost to IBM of $25m over five years. The proposed education village was conceived by John Murphy, superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district which has 85,000 pupils in 122 schools, and will include two elementary schools, a middle school and a high school and involve about 5,600 students all told. Some of the construction is contingent on passage of bond issues.
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