Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 14, 1993 TAG: 9307140171
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Good thing, too. Now that he's pulled a chair up to the school administration's table, the townsfolk are heaping his plate high with challenges.
School Board members recently scooped him a large dollop of budget woes when they asked him to find ways to bring more money into the system.
The Roanoke Education Association plans to plop down a big serving of pay-scale problems.
And the Parent-Teacher Association would like him to make room on his plate for promoting more parental involvement.
Yet you won't hear Harris bellyaching about indigestion or stomach ulcers.
"I'm excited about this," he said Tuesday, after 12 days on the job. "That's the only way we grow, is to stretch."
Harris sees his biggest challenge as choosing which problems to devour first. It's important to pick some in which his administration can make immediate progress, he said, to keep morale high and to muster the energy for those that may be tougher to swallow.
High on the list before him will be figuring out how to tackle six priorities picked by the School Board at a planning session last week. They include such daunting tasks as persuading the community to come up with more money for the school budget, creating a vision that will take city schools into the 21st century and laying out the parameters for school-based management, a system that shifts decision making from the central administration to individual schools.
"We won't be able to do it all this first year," said Harris.
Nobody expects him to. The board's priority list covers the next three years, and some of the items on it could take even longer to address, board member Nelson Harris said.
One is developing a vision for the future of Roanoke's schools, a dish Nelson Harris said the new superintendent should always keep before him.
"We should always ask, `Where do we want to be 10 years from now, or even 20 years from now?' I want Roanoke to be if not ahead of the trends at least keeping up with them," he said.
Gary Waldo would like the city to keep up on another issue - teacher pay. Both Roanoke County and Salem pay teachers more than the city does; starting salaries in the city are as much as $2,000 lower.
"That's a major, major - I can't emphasize enough - priority for the REA," said Waldo, the teacher organization's director. He wants to see Harris make teacher salaries competitive with the surrounding area.
Waldo said he's optimistic about Harris meeting that challenge - and others.
A particularly sticky issue for the new superintendent and his administration will be to create an environment in which teachers feel free to come forward with problems, Waldo said.
"They would like to feel that they could speak freely to the superintendent without fear of being judged, threatened or punished," Waldo said, "and that has not been true in the past."
This is one challenge the superintendent said will be met immediately.
"There is no room in the city school system for acts of terrorism," Harris said. "I will not tolerate that. Because that's counterproductive to what our mission is," which is caring for the needs of children.
"I don't have a concern when they speak out," said Harris. "I have a concern when they don't."
Richard Kelley, executive for business affairs, said switching gears would not be difficult for the administration because an intimidating environment never existed.
While former Superintendent Frank Tota and the education association had an often adversarial relationship, the staff treated teachers "in a professional manner," Kelley said.
More difficult, he said, will be the adjustment that staff members will have to make from Tota's "ad hoc" management style to Harris' penchant for streamlining responsibilities so that one person coordinates related activities.
Tota spread responsibility in a more diffuse manner, Kelley said.
Adjusting to a new staff - and letting the staff adjust to him - can be a frustrating task for someone who likes to make things happen quickly, Harris said.
"They have to be patient, and I have to be patient," he said. "I have this tendency to want to move faster than I should."
So Harris has set just one goal to accomplish by fall: "To open school without incident."
by CNB