WPLP Webmaster Sam Spirn introduced web-authoring as part of the 1997 summer program and continued in summer 1998. We decided to teach the kids HTML code rather than to use web authoring software because this introduced them to the logic of computer code and enabled them to create websites without having to buy software.
Junior counselors Tyshara Owen and Justin Parrish, who had participated in the Mill Creek Project as part of Glenn Campbell's eighth grade class, took the lead in developing SMS News in summer 1997 and were aided by SMS sixth- and seventh-graders Oneal Hall and Keith Cisco. In summer 1998, junior counselors Fatima Williams and Rasean Frazier, who had participated in the Mill Creek Project as part of Glenn Campbell's eighth grade class, continued the work with SMS News.
SMS News represented the beginning of Sulzberger's computer program, which grew into an extraordinary resource until it was shut down in 2002, when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took over the School District of Philadelphia and assigned the management of Sulzberger Middle School to Edison Inc., a for-profit corporation based in New York.
In 1998, two SMS students, Oneal hall and Keith Cisco, presented SMS News and the Mill Creek Project to the entire Pennsylvania Legislature as part of the governor’s annual Budget Speech.
Watch SMS Students Present to the Governor and Legislature.