Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993 TAG: 9307030186
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Long
Before Dodge took office in 1988, the county had gone through four different superintendents in five years.
"The division was floundering," he said.
Also a source of pride are the two new elementary schools begun under his leadership, Dodge said. Falling Branch Elementary in Christiansburg completed its first year of operation this spring, and construction was begun on a new elementary school in Blacksburg this spring.
Dodge, 46, was replaced as superintendent on Thursday by Herman Bartlett Jr., a Grayson County native, who had been superintendent in the city of Colonial Heights and Craig County before that.
When Dodge announced to his staff last October that he would not seek reappointment, he said, "I believe that I have taken Montgomery County public schools to a place where they can face the future with some clarity."
He wanted to leave the school system, Dodge said, when it was well positioned "for addressing the needs of our children in the 21st century."
But Dodge said in an interview this week that he is less confident now about the school system's future than he was two years ago.
"Only if the community comes to grips with whether they want quality schools" does he have hope for the system's future, Dodge said. People don't realize that the system is slipping back farther and farther, he said.
The conflict between the School Board and Board of Supervisors, which has boiled over in recent years, is in part a natural result of the School Board's duty under state law to provide a school budget based on the school division's needs, Dodge said.
"I think the Board of Supervisors has become increasingly angry that [the School Board is] doing their constitutional job," he said.
Another problem, Dodge said, is the pervasive attitude that the School Board has more money than it needs. But when individual supervisors take a hard look at the school budget they realize that's not true, he said.
School Board members whom the supervisors appoint with the idea that they will get the school budget in line come to the same realization, he said.
Since he left Montgomery County, Dodge has been a finalist for the superintendent's job in the Mobile, Ala., school system.
Forward Mobile, a group of business and civic leaders in the Gulf city was supporting Dodge's candidacy; and he said he felt he had the job locked up with the support of four of the five board members.
But three white members of the racially divided School Board supported an internal candidate, who had been the system's acting superintendent. Attempts by two black members on the board to swing the appointment to Dodge and other candidates failed by 3-2 votes. The subsequent fallout from the vote has badly divided the city, according to a Mobile newspaper.
Another job prospect also fell through recently. He was a finalist for the top job at the Blue Valley, Kansas, schools but was passed over there, too.
Dodge, who now lives in Charlottesville, said he left Montgomery County with some work unfinished and some regrets.
"I wished we'd had a higher standard for athletics and extra-curricular activities," he said. "I still believe it's the right thing."
During Dodge's first year in the county, the School Board voted to require students to have a "C" average before they could participate in athletics or extra-curricular activities. But under pressure from citizens and the Board of Supervisors, the board later reversed itself.
One argument against the policy was that it would increase dropout rates. But Dodge, a one-time coach, said that hasn't been the case in Texas, Michigan or St. Louis, other places it has been tried. And children who wind up in the county's alternative school for potential dropouts are not athletes, he said.
The controversy cost him a School Board member, Ann Alexander, who was not reappointed to the board because of her support for the policy, Dodge said. "That bothered me a lot to have a board member go down because of a policy."
Another of Dodge's regrets is that the school system was never able to offer foreign language programs down to the sixth grade. Students who want to go to college are going to need six straight years of foreign language, he said.
A further source of disappointment was that the school system had not been able to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio in kindergarten through second grade more, Dodge said. By giving children more attention in those early years, the schools could eliminate the need for remedial classes later on, he said.
Finally, Dodge said, "I would have like to have seen the new [Blacksburg] school finished."
Schools have become a popular focal point of public criticism because they're something everyone knows something about, Dodge said. "Everyone's been to school."
People can't influence government; they go to public hearings and nothing happens, he said. But community groups can make a change in their schools.
If society can't solve its problems, it expects the public schools to do it, he said. Society becomes worried about sexual permissiveness so it turns to schools to teach sex education.
The next round will see society asking the schools to teach values, he said. The home, not schools, is the place to teach values, he said.
Sex education should be taught in the home, too, Dodge said. He was a big supporter of family-life curriculum but wished all along that it didn't have to be brought into the schools, he said.
Homes have changed; parents don't want to take responsibility, Dodge said.
An example, he said, was the Montgomery County parent who showed up to complain that a driver's education course required parents to work with their children for 10 hours on their driving. "We gave him his [driver's education fee] back," Dodge said.
by CNB