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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 29, 1993                   TAG: 9309300294
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-3   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

SCHOOL-BOARD ELECTION FORUM IN CHRISTIANSBURG

It took 16 years in the General Assembly for a Northern Virginia delegate to convince his peers that voters should be able to decide whether they want elected school boards in their counties and cities.

Last year the legislature finally passed, and the governor signed, the bill sponsored by Del. David Brickley, D-Dale City.

Montgomery County voters will decide the issue in a November referendum. Four groups will hold a public forum on what it means to have an elected school board at Christiansburg High School from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Thursday.

Jerry Floyd with the National School Board Association will speak. Then Ann Hess, a former member of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors, will moderate a panel discussion of the issue.

The elected Board of Supervisors currently appoints the nine-member Montgomery School Board. Should voters approve the referendum, the first School Board elections would take place in November 1995.

Though the issue passed in 42 other localities across Virginia last year and also will be on the ballot this fall in Floyd, Roanoke, Bedford and Botetourt counties, voters in Blacksburg, Christiansburg and Montgomery will have a particularly local issue in mind - the hotly disputed school-holiday naming controversy.

Residents packed a Board of Supervisors meeting in December after a newspaper article about a controversy over using ``winter'' versus ``Christmas'' to describe a holiday for public school students in Frederick County mentioned that Montgomery had used the term ``winter break'' for five years. The board, bending to public pressure, passed a resolution in support of the school system's going back to the traditional religious holiday names of Christmas and Easter.

The move prompted the resignation of Daniel Schneck as School Board chairman and made the issue a part of School Board meetings for the next four months. Finally, on April 6 the School Board voted 7-2 to retain the secular names, prompting Christiansburg resident Lynn Linkous to promise that ``the majority will be heard'' this fall.

Linkous and her husband, Danny, organized a petition drive to gather the 2,929 signatures of registered voters necessary to place the issue on the ballot. They completed the effort in July.

Concurrent with the efforts of the Linkouses and other secular-name foes, a group in favor of keeping the non-religious names for school holidays formed. The Coalition for Community, of which Hess was a founder, published a petition of 400 names in the New River Current in February and is one of the sponsors of Thursday's forum. The other sponsors are the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, the county Council of PTAs and the local branch of the American Association of University Women.

by CNB