Sept. 21, 1999

100 days and counting to the year 2000!

And today, a new warning for Utah school districts that are in a race against the calendar.

A new government report says several large school districts across the country are not prepared for the year 2000 computer problem.

They found that Granite School District in Salt Lake County, is one of the nine that will be hard pressed to meet the Y2K deadline.

The GAO report was made public today, during a hearing of the Senate's Y2K Committee.

Utah Senator Robert Bennett, who chairs that panel, says the findings about the Utah schools are cause for concern but not alarm.

Sen. Robert Bennett/(R) Utah: "Even if they have Y2K problems, they will still be able to house, teach, and feed the children, so that schools will not shut down. The problem will be, particularly in those areas where there are large numbers of students, in the support systems-- handling registration, student records, seeking reimbursement from other government agencies that will depend on data to give support, and so on."

Granite was the only Utah school district included in the survey so Bennett says it's unknown whether others in the state are in better or worse condition. He says none of them have the money they need to properly prepare for Y2K.

Reaction From Granite District

If certain systems in the Granite District are not Y2K compliant in time, what will that really mean for students?

News Specialist Pamela Davis has that part of the story.

It won't mean insurmountable problems. Student records are safe, but computer classes might be at risk.

Still, Granite District officials promise any Y2K failures they have will not disrupt your child's education.

Michele Bartmess/Granite School District: "There's really nothing to be alarmed about in this report for us."

Even though the Granite School District comes up short in two areas of Y2K compliance, district officials say the bug won't disrupt the most important thing about school - learning.

The district is only 40 percent Y2K compliant when it comes to computers in instructional labs. The worst thing that could happen is that some computers in some labs won't work after January of 2000.

It could be hundreds of computers, most of which are likely to be in elementary schools.

In schools where they do have really old computers in the computer labs, Granite District plans to sidestep the Y2K bug. They'll set those computers back to the year 1976. All the days and months will match up with the year 2000, and the computers should keep running."

That's a trick that will also work on your VCR.

The Granite District is also only partially compliant in the area of food services. But that won't disrupt the lunch line.

In this area, the Y2K bug relates to an obscure area of record-keeping that might have to be done by hand.

Granite officials say they've done the best they can to get ready for the year 2000, given that the state Legislature is giving them no financial support to get the job done.

Michele Bartmess/Granite School District: "We've already spent about $4-million. And that's money that will not be reimbursed to us by the legislature. So we'll be as compliant as we can, given the financial straits every district is in."

The reason Granite was included in the survey of Y2K preparedness is that at the time, it was the largest school district in the state.