THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503100240
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
The Council of Civic Organizations hosted an education forum Wednesday night featuring Beach schools Superintendent Sid Faucette, School Board Chairman June Kernutt, Virginia Beach Education Association President Vickie Hendley and Council of PTAs President Dianne Florence.
The CCO has more than 70 member civic leagues, each of which has two voting members in the CCO. The room should have been packed, but wasn't. Blowing rain didn't keep the regulars away. A timely topic didn't draw many more.
The panel should not have been stacked, but was - stacked, that is, with school-related spokespersons who have either a gentlefolks' agreement not to tread where critics go or a remarkable meeting of the minds on usually controversial issues.
Taxing authority for elected school boards? Nobody on this panel could say why not. A lack of rigor in the curriculum? News to this group. The extent, funding and propriety of education associations' involvement in elective politics? Nothing worth debating there. Rusty jungle gyms (see Watchwords below), crowded schools, the prospect of more schoolchildren flying into town with the F/A-18s? ``The problem is dollars,'' which are ``hard to come by,'' but the solutions await millions more.
A single hint of discord concerned where a few more million might materialize, and with what strings. Asked about Goals 2000, a federal-government initiative that's much debated statewide, Ms. Florence responded that the national PTA supports Goals 2000 and actually worked - had to work hard - to get parental involvement included in the program. As organizations, she added, local PTAs are supposed to support Goals 2000. As a parent, a leader of a local PTA may have her own views; but as a spokesperson for her organization, she may either support the initiative or ``stay quiet.''
That policy has its logic. It also symbolizes the attitude of that evening's panel and of too many educationists generally: Go along and get along . . . or stay quiet.
A CCO forum is no place for fistfights. But are all those intelligent and caring enough to be school leaders like-minded in lock step? Surely somewhere on the city's educational organizational chart - on the School Board? in school administration? in the VBEA? in some PTA? - somebody high up has the job of challenging spending priorities and academic policies, checking out parental criticisms and doubts, scrutinizing the system's assumptions, assertions and accounts. Surely somebody has the gumption, and security, to give credit where it's due, and criticism too.
If nobody now enjoys that job, that gumption, that security, there's a ready remedy: a School Board short two members. The judges who will soon fill those vacancies should take note. by CNB