Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 5, 1993 TAG: 9312060200
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
But the voluminous study - the work of more than 200 parents, teachers and students - also may be the blueprint to ensure that today's kindergartners will be educated and employable by the time they graduate from high school in 2006.
``It's an advisory group set up from the grass roots, so the administration can formulate a 6-year improvement plan,'' said Superintendent Herman G. Bartlett Jr., who inherited the project last summer from his predecessor, Harold Dodge. ``It's an effort to look at long-term planning for Montgomery.''
Such long-range planning documents aren't unusual.
What will make this one so is if the School Board makes the Focus 2006 initiative - an outgrowth of former President Bush's America 2000 educational goals - a living document, rather than what board member Don Lacy describes as a ``shelf plan.''
Lacy knows of what he speaks. As a Virginia Tech professor who advises localities on how to improve their governments, Lacy has seen many such documents end up doing little more than gathering dust on a shelf after the initial hoopla.
He described the Focus 2006 study as the best he's seen because of the degree of participation and community involvement and the clarity of the final report presented to the School Board on Oct. 19.
So far, the School Board has invested 18 hours of public meetings working through the recommendations of the task forces that studied the school system in detail. The last of the sessions was scheduled for Saturday morning.
Member David R. Moore, who represents Christiansburg, hopes the School Board now will come together with a shared vision for the school system in the future.
Chairman Roy O. Vickers said he expects the School Board will go through the Strategic Planning Commission's final report (a slim summary of the lengthy task force reports) next month and work on setting down on paper the vision for the schools' future.
The task force work sessions have been a matter of plowing through the nitty-gritty of improving a public school system; the 2006 reports include topics that don't make for big headlines but are nonetheless important.
For example, one task force looked at social influences and values in the school system. The panel concluded, at the suggestion of its student members, that one way to teach ethics in the schools would be to set up both a high-school level course on the subject and a student-run honor system.
As task force member Shelly Blumenthal explained, students suggested the honor system idea because of their concerns about cheating.
The same panel also suggested a community service requirement for high school students as a way of building good citizenship, and an inter-county exchange program to expose students from areas as different from each other as Shawsville and Blacksburg to the county's diversity.
While some of the numerous recommendations seem practical and inexpensive to implement, others - such as a proposal for a 20-to-1 student to teacher ratio - seem more like a Sears, Roebuck and Co. Wish Book for teachers. The ratio now, which varies according to grade, can be as high as 28-to-1 for some classes.
But when given their charges earlier this year by the School Board-appointed, 25-member Strategic Planning Commission, the task force members were charged with being visionary, not necessarily cost-conscious.
Just because the proposals have been placed on the table doesn't mean School Board members support them. At an initial meeting to decide what to do with the Focus 2006 proposals, members bogged down on what to even call a new advisory body.
The original Focus 2006 Strategic Planning Commission recommended the School Board appoint a ``Progress Comission'' to track how the proposals were being pursued.
But several School Board members said they were uncomfortable with the word ``progress,`` as it implied acceptance of all the 2006 proposals.
In the end, the School Board postponed appointing a new advisory body, probably until January or February.
Depending on what the attorney general's office decides about the terms of appointed members in light of the first school board elections in 1995, the current board could be completely replaced by the late 1990s.
Though a new, elected board would be free to chart its own course, the Focus 2006 process could have long-lasting effects.
Said Christiansburg's Moore: ``This could be our legacy for the Montgomery County school system.''
Vice Chairman Robert C. Goncz, who represents northern Christiansburg and the Ellett Valley on the board, hopes that by putting the right elements into place, ideas generated by Focus 2006 will continually come before future boards.
``What we do, from a strategic standpoint, has to be a living document,'' Goncz said.
by CNB