CARROLL COUNTY GROUP LOOKS TO FUTURE OF EDUCATION

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

DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993                   TAG: 9302070147
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HILLSVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium
CARROLL COUNTY GROUP LOOKS TO FUTURE OF EDUCATION
People in Carroll County are taking a renewed interest in their school system as its educational program approaches the coming century.
A citizens group calling itself FORCE - Friends Organized Regarding Carroll Education - has come together informally to see what it might do to enhance educational opportunities in the county.
It began with three men - Randall Gravley, Jim McAlister and Charles Collins - talking with each other over a meal months ago about what could be done to help boost the educational program. They sent out a form letter inviting people to an initial meeting with Richard G. Salmon, a professor at the College of Education at Virginia Tech, as a speaker.
From there, the group has started meeting monthly at Carroll County High School. So far, it has identified four areas in which to work - school budgets, facilities and equipment, curriculum and instruction, and parental involvement and communications.
Meanwhile, the county School Board also started seeking more citizen involvement. It set up a 23-member countywide task force to look at capital improvement needs for the school system in the immediate and long-range future.
That group held its organizational meeting this month to start looking at needs ranging from buildings to computers.
Most of what people outside Carroll County have heard about its school system in the past year or so has been the protest by a highly vocal segment of the population over the use of Clyde Edgerton's novel "The Floatplane Notebooks" for supplemental reading in a high-school English class.
Meanwhile, educators in the county have been quietly setting up initiatives such as the capital improvements task force and an accelerated-reading program for pupils at Hillsville Elementary School. None of those efforts has generated the publicity of the book squabble but they are likely to have much longer-lasting and positive effects.
The reading program offers a variety of books for pupils to read on their own, followed by a test on a computer to gauge how much of each book has been absorbed. Each test gives the reader a certain number of points based on what he or she gained from each book.
The pupils are not getting graded on this reading. But they can get rewards ranging from ice cream treats to $25 in cash as they accumulate points.
And when enough of them accumulate more than 2,000 points, which it now looks like will happen sometime next month, their names will be placed in a hat and three will be drawn out. Those three youngsters will have the privilege of throwing a cream pie into the face of Hillsville Elementary Principal Joe Bunn.
The school is gradually adding the books covered by the computer software testing to its library, and the Carroll County Public Library is providing some of the books the school does not have. School officials say the program seems to be accomplishing its goals of improving reading comprehension and vocabulary, and simply making reading more fun for young people.
That is not the only innovative program going on in Carroll. FORCE also is pushing an adopt-a-school program in which businesses would send some of its representatives to speak at school programs, show the school's art or other work at the business, or maybe even offer internships to students.
It also plans to attend public hearings on the 1993-94 school budget. "Just the numbers being there, I think, would show that there's interest," McAlister said.
McCalister is an area executive with NationsBank. Gravley is a part owner of several businesses and Collins is a pharmacist.
"We'd been talking about doing something like this for a number of years," McAllister said. The three been concerned about the lack of citizen involvement in school budget hearings and other aspects of education.
The organization they began alerts its membership on school issues with a telephone tree, in which one person is responsible for calling others. It is also looking into a tutoring program in which its members can help students who are having trouble in a subject.
It plans to invite representatives to gatherings of the Pulaski County school system, which already has involved business and industry people in such programs as well as planning committees for the future of education in the county.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB