Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 23, 1993 TAG: 9305230030
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Or so she promised when she announced her candidacy in March.
"As governor, I will completely change the way Virginia's schools are managed," she said in her announcement speech.
She promised a board of directors for every school. Involvement from business and civic leaders. And schools that would serve as community focal points.
But just what did she mean by all that?
School-based management - by law, if it comes to that.
Imagine, she explained during a recent interview: A group of parents, teachers and local power brokers who run each school, listen to student and parent complaints, and make decisions about how to handle morale or discipline problems.
Imagine: Opening satellite offices for the health department, social service agencies and mental health services down the hall from the principal's office.
Imagine: Making an appointment for career counseling in the same building where Junior learns to recite his ABCs.
Much of what Terry proposes requires little imagination, actually. It's already being done.
Many of Virginia's school divisions - although nobody knows exactly how many - use site-based community councils to make decisions about how to run each school.
Those councils include parents, teachers, administrators and sometimes business or community leaders as well.
Like the boards Terry proposes, they make decisions about how to improve disciplinary procedures or what a school's mission should be.
Some go further, deciding which textbooks to use and how to spend the school's budget.
But none, so far, has taken steps to move social service agencies into the schools or consolidate all services for families and children under one roof.
"We need to move [services] out of the county seat and into the schools where the people are," Terry said.
Not by eliminating the agencies' main offices, she said. By opening new ones.
That can be done without extra money or personnel, Terry said, by shifting people among offices.
Educators and school administrators find the idea appealing - as long as it doesn't cost them any money.
"I think that this is a concept that deserves exploring," said Richard Kelley, executive for business affairs with the Roanoke schools.
Kelley said the idea isn't new. He pitched it to the Parent-Teacher Association's Central Council last fall.
"The schools could provide these services at the grass-roots level," he said.
But the city would have to pay for them.
That's something that would have to be discussed, said Doris Kinsey, Roanoke's acting superintendent of social services.
She wonders where she'd get the extra staff to distribute food stamps, welfare checks and a host of other benefits her agency provides.
"I think in theory, it sounds like something that could really be of benefit to the families," she said. "But it's a question of how to pay for it - logistically, how to do it."
"I don't think these barriers are insurmountable," said School Board member Nelson Harris, who supports the idea.
"We need as educators to be concerned about the total child."
There's nothing in Virginia law that would stop localities from doing this now if they wanted to, said Deann Hubicsak, spokesman for the state's Department of Social Services.
Her office would not resist such a move, which fits - in theory - with the Comprehensive Services Act For At-Risk Youth and Their Families.
The Act, passed in 1992, calls for streamlining services that affect children so that families don't have to shuttle from agency to agency, often missing benefits to which they are entitled.
Kelley said the idea resurfaced recently when the School Board, City Council members and others met to discuss a long-term vision for Roanoke.
That plan still is being developed, he said.
Roanoke's new school superintendent, E. Wayne Harris, also is talking about it. He said he has spoken with administrators at the city's Health Department already and hopes to see more partnerships between the schools and a number of city agencies.
"It makes a lot of sense to get together, pool our efforts," he said.
It would also help families who don't have access to transportation if they could find these services in their own communities, said Rob Jones, president of the Virginia Education Association.
"I don't think it's a bad idea," he said.
But he cautioned against giving the schools too much responsibility without the money to back it up.
"Her argument is a good one," he said of Terry's platform. "But be careful."
by CNB