Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 8, 1993 TAG: 9305080144
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GALAX LENGTH: Long
When the wind blows through the mountains of Carroll County, a low groan emerges from the Latin I classroom at Galax High School.
Half a dozen students fidget as their teacher flickers and fades from a television screen at the front of the room. She comes to them via satellite from Richmond, and windy days can mean frequent disruptions.
Sophomore David Blythe waits patiently for the picture to return. He knows that without the satellite dish parked outside his school, there would be no Latin class.
He also knows that foul weather plays no part in the education of students 300 miles to the northeast, where Fairfax County schools offer a far broader selection of subjects, including several languages and many advanced-level courses. Blythe recently saw for himself the difference $2,000 per student can make.
Two weeks ago, he took a bus to Northern Virginia with 24 other Southwest students as part of an exchange program between the state's most financially divergent regions. This week, 25 Fairfax County students ventured south to peek inside some of the state's poorest schools, those suing the state for failing to provide all young Virginians the same educational opportunities.
But Blythe wouldn't trade his electronic classroom for all the live teachers in Northern Virginia.
It's just as good, he said. And he likes his home school - lower per-pupil spending and all - better.
"We do with what we have," Galax Principal Doug Arnold said. "We'd like to have more, no doubt about it. But we make do."
Turning the politically charged disparity argument on its ear, some Northern Virginia students suggested there are ways in which those in Southwest do even better.
"They are a lot smaller, but what they lack financially, they make up with the teachers and the administration - a very caring atmosphere," said Brendan Johnson, a junior at Alexandria's West Potomac High School, where state and local spending on each student amounts to $6,643.
Johnson spent the week at Mount Rogers, where each student accounts for $4,537 of the school budget.
At Thomas Jefferson High School, a Fairfax County magnet school and one of the most technologically advanced in the country, "some teachers take the attitude, `I'm paid to be here so long; at 4 o'clock I'm out of the building,' " said Everett Alcorn, a junior.
Alcorn couldn't believe it when Arnold recognized him at school Monday morning, the day after a welcoming picnic for the urban visitors.
"He knew me by name," Alcorn said. "Everybody knows everybody."
That's not just nice, Alcorn and the other Northern Virginia students said. It creates the type of atmosphere that invites students to hang around after class and talk with teachers, to speak up when they need extra help.
And to be quiet and listen while the teacher is teaching, said Jasmine McDonald, a junior from J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church.
"It's sort of like having your mother in the room," she said.
Mount Rogers science teacher Becky Williams said she feels like a mother to her students, who spend their entire public school lives in the same tiny rock-and-brick building perched near the tip of Whitetop Mountain. With 80 students from kindergarten through high school, Mount Rogers is the smallest school in Virginia.
"I know when my kids are having a bad day," Williams said.
That's not to say that the spending gap doesn't create inequities.
Mount Rogers students don't even take satellite classes. In fact, the school offers no advanced classes at all, only extra work for those who are ready to move on. It provides the basic minimum education required by the state - little more.
That means five microscopes in the science lab, a room with three electrical outlets. The Parent-Teacher Organization chipped in $148 for a "gro-light" so the students could experiment with plants.
This year, the Grayson County School Board will replace the wooden desks with acid-free table tops to make the classroom safer during chemical labs, Williams said.
The high school band - which practices in the cafeteria - consists of one banjo player, one fiddler, three guitarists and a bass player. There also is a piano, but nobody to play it.
There are no fields on which to play football, but the school does have a basketball team.
And the tiny, one-room library pales next to J.E.B. Stuart's expansive, computerized media center.
Still, two or three graduates (of a class of eight or nine) leave for college each year, Principal Wilma Testerman said.
"We don't even talk about disparity," she said. "We feel like the county gives us what they can. We don't feel like we're being discriminated against."
There are computers throughout the building, Testerman said, including 15 in a computer lab and one in the office.
"We could use some more computers, and we will probably get some more," she said. "But at this time, we are managing quite nicely with the ones we do have."
At Grayson County High School, students learn to type on the same equipment found at J.E.B. Stuart, said Mary Beth Hicks, a Northern Virginia sophomore. Besides the difference in size - her school of 1,200 students is twice as large as Grayson County High - she noticed few differences between the two schools.
Given a choice, however, she'd choose to stay up north, where there is "lots of action and lots of people running around and lots of noise."
Mount Vernon junior Trey Coonrod, whose family has lived all over the world, said he would rather go to school in Southwest - for the same reasons.
"Here everything is relaxed," said Coonrod, who traded his home in the Washington suburbs for a week on a sheep-and-tobacco farm.
Johnson said he'd like to see a school that combines what is best from each of the regions.
"If you could have the same classes offered in Northern Virginia, with smaller class size, if they could offer that with smaller schools, then you'd have the best of both worlds," he said.
by CNB