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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 23, 1994                   TAG: 9403260016
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SCHOOLS

THEN there's the one about the fella with his left foot in a bucket of boiling water and his right foot in a bucket of ice. Darned uncomfortable, but on average about right.

Averages, in other words, can deceive by making things appear better than they really are. But they can work in the other direction as well, sometimes making things look worse than they are.

Case in point: the racial composition of Virginia's unelected local school boards.

The American School Board Journal recently described the "average" school-board member nationwide as a white male suburbanite, which comes pretty close to describing the average, politically incorrect school-board member in the commonwealth.

Masked by the average, however, is the fact that 21 percent of school-board members in Virginia are nonwhite, a figure proportionate to the nonwhite percentage of the state's population. Indeed, the lack of a racial disparity in the composition of its local school boards makes Virginia a rarity among the 50 states.

The 2-to-1 ratio of men to women on Virginia school boards is another story. On this point, the report that the "average" school-board member is male is not deceiving. A troubling gender-disparity in fact exists.

Virginia's move to a system of all elected school boards seems only a matter of time, given the strong preference for elected boards in localities where referendums on the question have been held. Under this new system, can the presence of racial minorities on Virginia school boards be kept proportional, despite the experience of other states? And can the number of women on school boards be increased?

It's worth making the effort, for at least a couple of reasons.

First, until or unless the day arrives when race and gender don't matter in American society, it's important that the interests and insights of women and racial minorities be represented in the making of school policy, and that women and minorities are in place as role models for young people.

Second, when women or racial minorities are systematically underrepresented in policy-making roles, it's a pretty sure sign that a community isn't tapping its potential leadership resources to the fullest. It's a sign instead that a community is letting talent go to waste - at a time when above-average people are badly needed in such positions.

by CNB