Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 5, 1990 TAG: 9006050312
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: WISE LENGTH: Medium
As expected, they told members of Gov. Douglas Wilder's Commission on Educational Opportunities for all Virginians that the rural areas will need more state funding to bring themselves up to the levels of the more affluent school districts.
State Education Board member James Jones of Abingdon said increased state funding should be tied to increased local effort. If localities fail to increase their own educational improvement efforts, he said, they should not get additional state aid.
Jones said the state should not tell localities what to do, but set performance standards and let localities find ways to achieve them.
But many spoke also of a need for more staff development opportunities for teachers in Southwest Virginia, where many counties are hours away from colleges and universities where such courses are available.
The three-hour hearing at Clinch Valley College followed six hours of visits to schools in Washington, Lee, Scott and Wise counties, giving commission members an idea of the distances between schools in the region and some of the mountain roads that must be traveled to reach them.
Norton Superintendent Al Armentrout said limited graduate training opportunities for teachers are a problem for his city, which is three hours from Virginia Tech or Radford University. He said the addition of graduate-level courses at Clinch Valley, a branch of the University of Virginia, would help.
Del. Jack Kennedy, D-Norton, a Clinch Valley graduate, said hundreds of people would attend graduate-level offerings at the college if they were available, teachers as well as those in other fields. Del. Ford Quillen, D-Gate City, a commission member, also stressed the need for accessible graduate courses.
"We don't have 'em, we've never had 'em, and we've missed out on a lot in Southwest Virginia because we don't have 'em," Quillen said. "And we're tired of begging."
Rachel Fowlkes, director of the University of Virginia Southwest Center at Abingdon, said the center has offered master's-level courses in three educational areas for 12 years and graduated about 250 teachers, "just a drop in the bucket."
She said many Southest Virginia school divisions lack money for such courses. The average amount budgeted annually for teacher training by those divisions is $87 per teacher, she said, which is less than the $93 per-credit-hour cost at the center.
Teachers in Southwest Virginia schools often have other school jobs besides teaching their classes, Fowlkes said, which limits their time for more training. She recommended that money be provided to cover relief time for teachers in school budgets.
A University of Virginia professor gave a physics assignment to 22 teachers taking his course, which he said freshman-level students had no trouble completing, Fowlkes said. But only one of the 22 teachers managed to complete it by the following week.
Many teachers have had no science courses in 20 years, she said, and a number did not even know about the "big bang" theory of the creation of the universe. "It's not that they're not interested. It's just that the opportunity doesn't exist."
Jones, the Education Board member who also served on the Lacy Commission recommending measures to boost the region's economy, said improved education is vital. "We found that the key to economic development in Southwest Virginia was to strengthen our educational system. There simply was no question about it," he said. "We are counting on you to make a real difference."
Jones is now chairman of Forward Southwest Virginia, a regional advocacy group that grew out of the Lacy Commission. He said that group feels that education still is the key to meeting the region's other needs.
by CNB