WOODBRIDGE, Va. — In the gray glow of a computer screen, 5th-grader Kathryn Barrows pecked out a message to her new electronic pen pal, a Canadian student named Jennifer.
Barrows clicked her mouse and the e-mail disappeared into cyberspace, en route via the Internet to Jennifer's classroom in Ontario.
"Oh, that was so easy," Barrows giggled, wide-eyed.
Poised at a keyboard in her school's computer lab, 10-year-old Barrows could be a poster child for President Clinton's campaign promise to wire all classrooms and public libraries to the Internet, a worldwide information network, by the year 2000.
But as the federal government prepares to launch such an effort, many facilities are finding information-age technology financially out of reach.
To make telecommunications more affordable, an advisory panel of state regulators and Federal Communications Commission officials is recommending that schools, libraries and rural health clinics receive discounted prices on Internet links and other high-tech services.
The discounts would knock 20 percent to 90 percent off regular Internet rates, which can run to thousands of dollars a month at a typical school.
FCC officials estimate the discounts would average about 60 percent. Low-income communities and high-cost rural areas would be eligible for the deeper reductions.
As directed by Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the cost would be borne by telephone and cable companies in exchange for the freedom to enter each other's markets. The industry would be required to pay $2.25 billion annually for the discounts.
The plan, unanimously endorsed by the advisory panel Nov. 7, is considered all but certain to be approved by the FCC next spring.
Administration officials predict the discounts will accelerate Internet access and provide the biggest new investment in educational facilities in years. The officials also expect the sliding discount scale to help even out disparities in technological progress between affluent and poor communities.
But industry officials, while not opposing the plan outright, suggest it is too costly.
"I'm passionate about technology in the classroom, but ($2.25 billion) is really a huge number," said Marvin Bailey, vice president of technology programs at Ameritech in Indianapolis. "Ultimately, the consumer winds up paying for that."
The plan also disappointed some technology advocates who say it falls short of fulfilling Clinton's promise of no-cost Internet services.
"Telecommunications access should be free to any public educational institution because it's crucial to the development of our culture and society," said Joyce Latham, the Chicago Public Library's director of automation. "It should be free in the same way schools are free, libraries are free and roads are free."
Others argue that the Internet is an overrated and expensive distraction that won't necessarily make schools better.
"What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology," Steve Jobs, a co-founder of Apple Computer, recently told the National Education Association, a teachers union. "(Abe) Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him."
Many education experts, however, say youngsters are naturally drawn to computers, which can make learning more exciting and relevant.
"If Abe were alive today, he'd be surfing the net," said Linda Roberts, who directs the Education Department's Office of Educational Technology. "It's a different world today. If you go to excellent schools, the really high-quality learning institutions, they've already got this technology."
The number of schools with Internet access is growing steadily, but most classrooms have yet to be connected. In 1995, half the nation's 110,000 elementary and high schools were wired, according to the department. But often the computers are in a principal's or counselor's office, unavailable to students. Only 9 percent of all classrooms were wired.
The data also underscore the cost barriers to poor communities, where only 1 in 3 schools are wired, compared to 2 out of 3 in affluent districts.
For instance, in Virginia's Prince William County, a suburban enclave of malls and subdivisions where Barrows attends Kerrydale Elementary School, the school district is further along than most in connecting to the Internet.
One-third of the county's classrooms got computers this fall, enabling students such as Barrows to use the Internet to correspond with kids in other countries, participate in a statewide math competition and do research on wagon trains, Amish culture, and other class projects.
But the expense has been daunting. In the last two years, the district has spent $6 million installing high-speed wiring and other high-tech equipment throughout its 60 school buildings.
More computers will arrive early next year, said Jenelle Leonard, the district's technology supervisor, but it will take at least another year or two before the district can afford a computer in every classroom.