Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 10, 1994 TAG: 9406170101
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: |By MELISSA DeVAUGHN| |STAFF WRITER|
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But the students maintain that Bartlett disparaged advanced-placement classes at the school during a June 2 Student Council Association leadership conference.
Dennis Price and four other students went before a packed School Board meeting this week and criticized Bartlett's comments.
Price, one of 16 students at the conference, said that when he asked Bartlett a question about the importance of liberal arts in a school's core curriculum, Bartlett went off on a tangent and talked instead about the overcrowding of advanced-placement classes.
Bartlett repeatedly referred to a May 27 Roanoke Times & World-News article, Price said, and criticized advanced-placement history teacher Delores Grapsas, who was quoted as saying she had to drop some parts of the curriculum to accommodate large classes.
In a videotape of the meeting, given to the media Thursday, Bartlett gave lengthy answers to questions, but never specifically mentioned Grapsas or her class.
"He didn't come right out and say anything specific," said Price, who will be the Student Council Association president next year. "It's more the way we perceived it."
Price quoted Bartlett as saying, "When you cut out reading assignments and research papers, then the class is not AP anymore."
"He's so misinformed," Price said. "He doesn't even realize what the class involves. We are not attacking him in any way. I just don't want any teacher of mine - especially Ms. Grapsas - to feel her class isn't AP."
Bartlett said the students' perception is untrue.
"I've re-looked at the tape five or six times to try and understand why something like this could happen," Bartlett said. "The first thing I was trying to say is that we shouldn't have a class with 30 people."
Bartlett insisted his comments were not directed at Grapsas. "I couldn't even remember who it was that was quoted in the article," he said. "I would have said what I said about any teacher and any class."
In the videotape, Bartlett blamed site-based decision making as a factor in the overcrowding. With site-basing, it is up to the principal to decide how classes will be arranged. Bartlett said if he were principal, "I'd have split that class into three, not two."
Sandra Varner, Blacksburg High's Parent-Teacher-Student Association president, said that may be true, but more than 30 percent of the school's core curriculum classes are already overcrowded, leaving few alternatives. Requests for additional teachers were denied, she said.
Bartlett "was inappropriate in that he was talking about a teacher in a negative way, and about her curriculum, and he has never even spoken with Ms. Grapsas about her class," Varner said.
In a climate survey released three weeks ago, Bartlett received a grade of D- from teachers and a D+ from principals. Among his conclusions in the report, Virginia Tech consultant Wayne Worner found that "the most notable concern was that of restricted communication to and from the top of the school system."
"What [Bartlett] thinks he says is one thing," said Brian Diffell, another student who attended the conference. "But he has to take responsibility for everything he says, no matter how it is perceived. He is the superintendent. He should at least apologize to Ms. Grapsas."
He took more than 90 minutes in what should have been a brief welcome, but
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