
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 23, 1991                   TAG: 9103250219
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL HAS LONG BEEN ADVOCATED

WHEN JEFFERSON High School closed, I suggested at a School Board meeting that part be converted into a Jefferson Technical High School. I was told the school was structurally condemned.

I also suggested that such a school should be of the highest quality in curriculum and teachers, and coordinated with Virginia Western Community College (at that time called a technical institute), with input from Virginia Tech, other colleges in the area and the state Board of Education. This idea, long before the concept of magnet schools was on the horizon, was shot down by all members of the School Board.

I pointed out that this city in 1967 was on the verge of introduction of drugs into the schools. There had been five or six recent deaths of ex-students from heroin overdoses, the number of single parents was on the rise, welfare rolls were increasing, and opportunities were lacking for those who did not go on to a four-year college education and did not have marketable skills.

Over the next 20 years, I talked to many people - teachers, principals, even the superintendent - City Council members individually and collectively in public forum, leaders in the black community and this newspaper, hoping that the concept would at least be discussed for its merits or shot down.

Now on March 1, the state's education secretary was quoted as saying that students who do not go on to college should have the option to enroll in a technical or apprenticeship program.

I ask City Council, as it is about to make School Board appointments, what kind of school system it wants - to educate all of the students or only half of them - and what kind of a city: one whose young people have marketable skills, making it attractive for new industries, or whose young people with nothing to do except with what we see today?

JOHN JOFKO

ROANOKE

by CNB