Clearly there is more to be done than visiting a school and writing about its success, so in June we formed a nonprofit corporation, the Foundation for Future Technology Leaders. Its initial goal will be to help raise money for scholarships to be given to high-school students planning to study IT-related fields in college.

The first scholarships will be awarded to students in Fairfax County, but we want to make this program national quickly. We will be accepting donations later this month and expect the bulk of the program to be funded by technology vendors located in, but not limited to, Washington, D.C. In addition to running the foundation, we will make our own monetary contribution.

One local company, Chevin, has already begun working to donate its network-management product, Tevista, to Chantilly High School to help the students there learn network management.

The foundation's goals don't stop at scholarships. There is a big need for more teachers. The folks at Chantilly Academy recruit many from industry--a compelling approach, but one fraught with risk. A San Francisco Bay-area employee of WorldCom wrote about a teacher at a local high school who formed an after-school networking department that eventually developed ways for the kids to get industry certification and to maintain the school's IT infrastructure. But then the teacher doubled his salary by leaving for a start-up company, and the program died. We believe there are ways for IT professionals to get involved with the schools' IT curriculum without having to give up higher-paying jobs.

For those interested in the short-term payoff, there is also the opportunity to create a network of internships. Many of these kids are ready to make an impact now. I read recently about a group of high-school and college students in Kansas City, Mo., who launched ResumeGuys.com, a Web-based service that helps create résumés and write customized cover letters and send them directly to employers via e-mail. With that successfully under way, these kids are starting a press distribution service called PressReleaseBooster.com.

A general manager at Yankee Environmental Systems in Turner Falls, Mass., told me he read in a local paper about a high-school student who had scored high on the CNE tests. The general manager hunted the student down and hired him as an intern.

Earlier this year, Victor Vasquez, deputy assistant secretary of defense, visited Chantilly H.S. with Carroll McGillin, manager of Cisco Networking Academies, to explore the possibility of expanding the school's internship program at the Pentagon.

One of our Wisconsin-based editors pointed to a new high school in Fox Valley, Wis. Its network (switched 100-Mbps Ethernet to all desktops; gigabit fiber uplinks from the edge to the core) carries all data, voice (using Cisco VoIP equipment and Call Manager) and video (using Cisco IPTV). There are no analog phones. Compaq Computer servers run Microsoft Windows 2000 and Novell NetWare and handle student records, grading and billing, as well as firewall, content filtering, proxy cache, Web server, DNS, DHCP and e-mail functions.

The schools are trying to keep pace. How will you help?