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

DATE: SUNDAY, May 1, 1994                   TAG: 9405010113
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARA LEE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BARTLETT'S PAST WORK ALSO DREW SUPPORT, CRITICISM

Bartlett, 50, was originally third choice for superintendent in Montgomery. His public interview came during the blizzard of '93.

Bartlett, who is paid $80,000 a year, was superintendent in Craig County and Colonial Heights, a bedroom community south of Richmond.

Kerthy Hearn, Virginia Education Association representative in Colonial Heights, said Bartlett compromised at the end of his eight-year tenure. "I respected him for that. That was frankly a little uncharacteristic of him."

The School Board voted 3-2 to renew Bartlett's contract, and Hearn said the controversy over the renewal led to the petition drive to go to an elected school board.

Bartlett served in Craig County from 1982 to 1985. Gary Waldo, VEA representative for the Roanoke Valley for the last 20 years, remembered Bartlett's tenure clearly.

He said that, after former Roanoke Superintendent Frank Tota, "Bartlett was the most difficult and belligerent I ever had to work with.

"He was always very hostile and threatening. Unusually so. It was just a bad scene there when he was there."

"I think my record in terms of gains in education speaks for itself," Bartlett said. "I never had anything but the utmost respect for" Waldo.

Teachers in Craig publicly asked the School Board to tell Bartlett to soften his intimidating manner.

But John Crenshaw, the teachers' spokesman, remembered him more kindly. "Overall, I felt that the school system was in far, far better shape when he left than when he arrived," Crenshaw said. "In terms of the back room stuff, my impression is he was a master of it. I don't know if anyone could've squeezed more money out of the supervisors than he did.

"I'd work for him again."