Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993 TAG: 9310110044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When parents first learned of class assignments this school year at Lincoln Terrace Elementary School, some were aghast at the numbers.
Each of the school's two kindergarten classes has about 26 pupils. The school's lone fifth-grade class has 33 pupils.
"I hope it gets parents angry enough," said Victoria DiProspers before a September PTA meeting at Lincoln Terrace. "We have a very diverse group of students. To me, that would say we have greater needs. We have to have more teachers."
After the meeting, 62 people signed a petition to E. Wayne Harris, superintendent of schools in Roanoke, asking that two teachers be added to the school staff "immediately."
Parent involvement at the Lincoln Terrace school is tradition. For years, the school has had a strong PTA, from the days when profits from PTA-sponsored bingo games paid for a new parking lot and copying machines.
"We don't gamble anymore," joked DiProspers, first vice president of Lincoln Terrace PTA. Still, the PTA ended the 1992-93 school year with a $1,800 balance, and hopes to add another $4,700 to its coffers through 1993-94 fund-raising projects.
Though the PTA's membership has dropped slightly in the past two years, it survives. Activities are child-centered: a wardrobe exchange, educational trips, a drive to fill 300 American Red Cross care boxes by December.
"Someone needs to stand up and speak for these children," parent Angelique Fitzgerald said. "That's how valuable the PTA is."
Some are concerned that if the membership decline continues, parents will lose a much-needed voice. The concern was so great that the school set a goal this year to increase parent involvement.
"It really is the key," said Helen Dudley, a kindergarten teacher. "It doesn't have to be physical involvement but a personal involvement with the child. No one should be too busy for that."
The school is across Liberty Road from the Lincoln Terrace public housing development in Northwest Roanoke. Its parking lot overlooks an expanse of green field and asphalt courts where youngsters play basketball in the afternoon and hold league football practice at night. In the background looms the Dominion Tower and, off in a distance, the Mill Mountain Star.
William Sinkler, the principal of the Lincoln Terrace school, knows that his school is often viewed as a bad one in a bad neighborhood.
But he - and others - work hard at quashing that perception.
"A school in this segment of Northwest [Roanoke] is not perceived as a place where youngsters receive a good education," Sinkler said. "We have something to prove to the public."
"Yes, we have to fight," said Carolyn Johnson, parent of a Lincoln Terrace third-grader and of a daughter who attended the school years ago.
"Publicity at one time was bad in this community. I've never heard anybody say that they didn't want their children to go to Lincoln Terrace because of the community, but I'm sure there are some out there who've said it.
"But they don't know what a fine school this is."
Four years ago, the Lincoln Terrace neighborhood was hit with a barrage of bad publicity following the shooting death of a former high school football star over a drug deal gone bad.
Sinkler once thought of changing the school name.
"But if I did, it would insult the residents," he said. "We shouldn't have to do that. It's just a stigma."
The community has changed since the shooting, in part through the presence of a Roanoke Police Department COPE Unit and neighborhood programs for children and adults, Johnson said.
"When you build community pride, it carries over into the school," she said. "The school and community try to make sure we work together."
Johnson, a former PTA officer who is president of the Lincoln Terrace Resident Council, said she frequently reminds parents of the importance of attending parent-teacher conferences, PTA meetings and "checking with the teacher about their child."
The school's vision is a shared one, Sinkler said. Its newly crafted mission "is to educate the mind, body and spirit of every child with special emphasis placed on the principles of dignity, self-worth and reverence for life."
"Children are the focus of the entire school, not one or two people," Sinkler says. "Everyone is involved."
Fifty-seven percent of the school's 309 pupils are black, and 43 percent are white. The school draws kids from as close as the Lincoln Terrace housing development and as far as the Roanoke-Vinton boundary. There are children from nearly every economic group, Sinkler said.
The majority, however, live in poverty. Some 75 percent of the Lincoln Terrace school's pupils are classified as "disadvantaged."
"We do have children with a lot of special needs, and our challenge is to work with them," Dudley, the kindergarten teacher, said. "We have some crack babies here; some with attention deficit disorder. But we work quickly to help these children."
Dudley came to Lincoln Terrace straight out of college. That was 23 years ago.
"The reason the school has survived as well as it has is that the faculty, the staff, the principal shows concern for the children," she said. "Everybody cares about these kids."
"People ask me why I don't put my son in another school," DiProspers said. "But they know how to teach kids at Lincoln Terrace. They show them they can achieve anything they want to achieve."
by CNB