Rather than wait for the budget situation to improve, some cash-strapped schools are asking for money from parents' groups - including foundations established expressly to help pay for technology purchases - to buy computers.

To the Editor: "A Barn-Raising for the Internet Age" (Dec. 19), on Mississippi high school students who are building computers for their state's cash-strapped schools, was inspiring.

But one wonders how many cash-strapped public schools will avail themselves of this change, given that opening up their workstations will require them to spend additional money on access supervisors and technical support.

Companies often assist cash-strapped schools with resources but sometimes conduct market research in the process, he said.

And a Wanzai County school official told Reuters today that third graders assembled fireworks there to earn extra money for the cash-strapped school.

It's very upsetting that cash-strapped schools have to waste their time and money on this silliness.

These voters then refused to approve further money for the cash-strapped schools, forcing them to close months early.

They now didn't need the guitars and drums they couldn't afford, or the brass instruments that were no longer available in their cash-strapped public schools.

Boehner was friends with Kennedy, also a Roman Catholic, and every year they chaired fundraisers for cash-strapped Catholic schools.

From these humble beginnings, the university progressed from a poorly funded church-supported school, to a cash-strapped normal school, to a teachers college and, finally, to the state university it has become.