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

DATE: THURSDAY, March 3, 1994                   TAG: 9403030153
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

SCHOOL BOARD PLEDGES TO WORK WITH COUNTY

But the School Board didn't vote on the contract supervisors Chairman Larry Linkous and his colleagues put on the table two weeks ago as a way of ending the 2-year-old controversy over access to school financial figures.

Instead, after a late-night, closed-door session, the School Board offered what amounted to an olive branch back to Linkous.

The resolution, approved unanimously, notes that the School Board "intends to continue to promote an open channel of communications between the two boards and to supply any information requested by the Board of Supervisors."

The resolution also promises school officials will provide "any information that is necessary for the Board of Supervisors to evaluate the School Board's budgetary proposals."

The supervisors, who control the county's purse strings, have proposed dropping their attempt to take over the schools' finance operations in return for the School Board's acceptance of an agreement to turn over specific financial information every month.

But they've also voted to hold up appropriating $235,000 for school finance operations until the School Board backs the contract.

The supervisors ruffled some feathers on the School Board by voting on the agreement on Feb. 15 without talking to school officials first.

Linkous, in a bid to smooth out the situation, turned pitchman before the School Board on Tuesday night.

"How something so simple turned into something so complicated, I don't know," Linkous said.

He stressed that the supervisors want more financial information as a means to improve budgeting, not to control school spending. Linkous said much of the proposed agreement is based on ideas taken from a memo prepared last April by former school Superintendent Harold Dodge.

"It would just give us information on a monthly basis for when questions arise," Linkous said. The exchange of information between school officials and the staff working for the Board of Supervisors has been excellent since June - when Dodge left and Herman Bartlett arrived - but the agreement would make certain that communication problems don't recur three to five years down the road, Linkous said.

School Board members uniformly thanked Linkous for appearing before them and the public. One member, retired teacher Annette Perkins, noted that Linkous had been a "good student" in her U.S. and Virginia government class in 1971 at Blacksburg High School.

But the board followed its usual procedures of delaying a vote on a new proposal in lieu of a formal review and discussion stretched over one or more meetings.

sh: :wq!: not found STORY linkous3.3 TOPIC school board KEYWORDK AUTHOR:briankelley03/03/94 1

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