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

DATE: SATURDAY, February 5, 1994                   TAG: 9402160006
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PUBLIC EDUCATION MOUSETRAPPED

MICKEY MOUSE was front and center at the General Assembly on Thursday - and not just at a Senate Finance Committee hearing where groups such as "Friends of the Mouse" turned out in force to lobby for state subsidies to bring the Disney's America theme park to Northern Virginia.

At the Senate Education and Health Committee also, the mouse roared, and legislators squeaked. Obsequiously, they killed a bill that would have put public education of Virginia's schoolchildren ahead of a special business interest shared by the 66-year-old rodent and Goofy.

Yep, they did it again - mandating that public schools not start classes until after Labor Day, so that Eastern Virginia's existing theme parks and related tourist-trade establishments will be guaranteed a source of cheap labor.

That robs local schools of scheduling options. But profits over pupils every time, said the Senate committee - the committee whose mission is supposedly to advance the interests of education and health in the commonwealth.

Virtually every major education organization in the state - teachers, school boards, school superintendents, PTAs, even the government's own State Board of Education - appealed to the legislators to repeal the 1986 law that forbids school openings before the Labor Day weekend.

This law has been particularly troublesome for school districts in Western Virginia, which usually have to close schools for several days during inclement winter weather, as they have during this winter's bout of snow, ice, sleet and arctic temperatures.

The repeal measure, introduced by Sen. Elliot Schewel, D-Lynchburg, would have let school districts set their own school calendars, thus giving them more flexibility to plan for snow and ice days and other emergency closings.

But the tourist industry put the skids on it, arguing that if teen-agers had to return to school before Labor Day, theme parks, hotels, restaurants and shops catering to tourists would be short of teen workers on summer's last big-profit holiday weekend.

"Put the children of Virginia ahead of Mickey Mouse," pleaded Sen. Hunter Andrews, D-Hampton. But the committee said rats to that. It voted 7-6 to kill Schewel's repeal bill, just as committees have killed similar bills almost every year since the scheme - er, that is, theme-park protection law - went on the books.

The nay-sayers ought to be sentenced to spend the entire month of June in Southwest Virginia un-air-conditioned classrooms full of restless 10-year-olds. No parole. No recess.

Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994

by CNB