<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">First off as a low level state employee your opinion on this will pretty much be ignored. Unless you are already tight with a legislator they probably wont give your issue much thought. Just speaking from experience. Your BEST bet is to get the parents involved. The approach is to get the parents and students to complain that the DOE is discriminating against low income students. By requiring the use of proprietary software (IE) it reduces access to only those who can afford to spend money on MS Windows. MAC and other users will be locked out. </blockquote> </div> Hmm ... I am not a state employee. I am just a parent volunteer at the school for the last 6 years, kid 'graduated' but I have been held back apparently :) I have given invited presentations at the state level on how the school implements IT, as well as statewide in-service presentations. Since the rep's were my neighbors, I thought I as 'tight' with them, but ... que sera. We already provide all in-school software to the kids at no charge except for the Type-to-learn package which is about $10. I will keep on trying via the legislature, only problem to resolve is how much time is left in a day after the regular job, etc. Seems this is going to take awhile. Still wish there was some legal issue that could be brought up, but it appears that there isn't. Thanks for the suggestions. I will keep on keeping on and see what happens. Sincerely, Dave Hopkins