The Garden City Public School District has been posting information pertinent to the schools on a web site and recently the technology students at the high school, under the direction of Dr. Rita Melikian, director of the district's technology program, created a new web page off of the main page for the district to discuss the bond referendum. The new Bond Outline Projects Summary found on the web contains information provided by the Ad Hoc Citizens Advisory Committee regarding the bond that was approved by the Board of Education at their Oct. 19 meeting and will come before the residents in the upcoming Dec. 10 vote.

Some residents have stated that they have had difficulty logging on to the site and have asked for some help, while others, still wary of surfing the net have asked Garden City Life to clear up some questions they still have about how this all works and how the high school students were able to establish this new site. The district was afforded the opportunity through the generosity of Adelphi University to establish a web site through Adelphi's computer network for free, rather than paying an Internet service provider (ISP) directly for this service. A company called Verio maintains what is known as the "gateway" for Adelphi, which links Adelphi's computer network on the campus to what computer technologists refer to as "the Internet cloud," the Internet at large. Part of the problem that residents have been experiencing in getting through to the bond site is the result of this sharing of the gateway.

When the students at Adelphi return in the afternoon to their dorm rooms after classes and head to the computer labs to get started on their research assignments and to relax for a while "hanging out" on chat lines, the amount of what is known as traffic becomes heavy and it becomes more difficult to get through the gateway. As parents and interested voters attempt to access the school's web site, they are in competition for space, called bandwidth. Each request to get through to any web site on the Internet is given a certain amount of time to live, and after that time, if it still has not gone through, it expires and is taken off of the network to save space on the net. Because the Internet can only handle so many requests at a time, some people have found their requests have been killed, so to speak. The request can be made again, and some may find that attempting these requests at "off-peak" hours will increase the likelihood of success.

Garden City Internet surfers have several options in how they can attempt to access the site. The main page's universal resource locator (URL -- commonly referred to as the web page address) is www.gardencity.k12.ny.us and the main page has links to several specific sites. These can be accessed by clicking the mouse on the frames (little boxes) on the left side of the page. The options from the main page include: bond; administration; Board of Education; PTA/SEPTA; Garden City High School; Garden City Middle School (although when Garden City Life attempted to access this, the computer reported a 404 error, indicating that the page has not been created yet, thus it is not yet an active link); Elementary Schools (this also stated that the object does not exist); and Primary Schools (this page also reported that the object could not be found). To get to the bond site directly, the URL is www.gardencity.k12.ny.us/bond and if people want to then travel to the main page from the bond page they can click on a link at the bottom of the page.

When an individual first sits in front of his or her computer and dials their Internet service provider (this is generally done today by simply clicking on an icon) one must then type in the name or URL of the site desired. The ISP then uses transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) to translate and pass along the request, be it from a PC or Mac out into the Internet cloud. Once the ISP passes the request on, it can end up going anywhere until it finally reaches its destination, which means that each time someone types in the web site URL, the way the individual's computer is finally linked to the Adelphi gateway can vary each time, using different links through what is known as dynamic re-routing, which attempts to find the shortest route to the site.

The request hops between routes as it travels to its destination. The majority of Internet traffic prior to reaching its destination, travels over large computer networks known as backbone systems. These are usually owned by large universities, government agencies, and telephone companies. Once the request makes it to Verio's gateway that they maintain for Adelphi the request makes its way through Adelphi's computer network to the computer where the file for the Garden City schools resides. A group called the Internic is responsible for making sure that each address is registered and it translates the URL typed in into an Internet protocol address (IP adress), which consists of four sets of numbers ranging from zero to 255. This method of translation is accomplished via the address resolution protocol (ARP).

Some impatient Internet surfers have asked if they could simply type the Internet protocol and avoid waiting for the ARP process, which might speed up the processing of their request. The IP for the web server is 198.138.227.221 and is the address for the district's main page, from which the bond page can be accessed.

Once people finally do get through to the bond site after their computer manages to successfully navigate through the Internet cloud, they will find a Bond Project Index. This lists various topics of the bond that can be accessed. (Demographics are listed, but as of press time were not yet posted.) Category descriptions and project summary costs have been posted, which are current, listing the total bond cost at $37,856,000, rather than the original $37,670,000 figure. The orginal total for Hemlock has changed from $1,277,000 to $1,283,000; the original total for Homestead has changed from $1,183,000 to $1,271,000; the total for Locust has changed from $1,212,000 to $1,298,000; the total for Stratford remains at $6,955,000; the total for Stewart remains at $5,620,000; the middle school's total has decreased from $8,320,000 to $8,192,000; and the high school's total has increased from $13,103,000 to $13,237,000.

Following the list of totals (comparisons to the old figures listed here do not appear on the site) there is a series of summaries of the Draft Capital Improvement Projects and a pie chart for each school in the district. The blueprints for each school have not yet been posted on the site, but Ad Hoc Chairman John Sullivan says that they are working with the students and Dr. Melikian to attmept to post these for viewing by the public on the site.

The next work session of the Board of Education is scheduled for Nov. 9 at 8:15 p.m. in the middle school and the next regular meeting will be held on Nov. 16 at 8:15 in the Administration Building. A public hearing on the bond has been set for Dec. 2 in the high school cafeteria. The bond vote will be on Dec. 10.