Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 15, 1995 TAG: 9506160009
SECTION: EDITORIALS PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A few officials tried to suppress information that might reflect negatively on city schools. Since the series was printed, some have resorted to questioning the motives and integrity of the reporter, Beth Macy.
At one point while Macy was doing her research, a school administrator insisted: "We have no data on truancy." Say what? That's either (1) an attempt to keep public information from the public, or (2) a startling admission of failure to get a grip on a serious problem.
No one should doubt its seriousness. In correspondence with the newspaper, a spokesperson has decried the stories' focus on city schools. But 53 percent of Roanoke's high-school students missed 11 or more days of school in 1993-94, according to a document filed with the state and obtained by Macy. That absentee rate includes excused absences as well as skipping. But it at least hints at a problem when you consider that the state's average rate is 35 percent and Roanoke County's is 24 percent.
Defensive city schools administrators are understandably concerned about image. They know that their staff and facilities are as good as those in neighboring jurisdictions, that their student bodies are wonderful, that good things - rising test scores, dropping dropout rates - are happening in the schools, and that remaining attractive to middle-class families is vital.
They also remain accountable to the public, however, and the public needs to know about challenges as well as successes. No one benefits if, as happened last year with stories Macy wrote about teen pregnancy, the message gets obscured by anger aimed at the messenger.
Sad to say, Macy's truancy series may have reinforced, in some minds, an old perception that this newspaper is biased against William Fleming High School - that we go out of our way to make the school look bad. In fact, Macy didn't need to go out of her way to find truants near the school. Kids obviously are playing hookey with ease. Less clear is how any Fleming students would benefit if their school's leadership feared a probing press or nurtured a sense of perpetual victimhood.
It isn't that city schools are ignoring truancy. If anything, the response seems to have improved under Superintendent E. Wayne Harris, now completing his second year in Roanoke. Macy's series described efforts - visiting teachers, Youth Experiencing Success (YES) counselors, the Noel D. Taylor Learning Academy, various collaborations of school and social-service professionals - to address the problem, whose causes originate mostly outside school gates.
By interviewing truants, Macy provided a compelling picture of what conscientious school officials confront, as they strive to keep troubled kids in school.
The problem is that they need more help. Harris set the right tone this week when he told the School Board that "we will continue to tackle the attendance problem with renewed vigor." He promised to expand home visits and alternative programs to keep kids in school. Good.
Still, those working with truants and dropouts - now spread thin - need more help not only from the administration. They also need it from the community.
Help ought to be readily offered, given the stakes involved. Truancy marks an entranceway to a road often leading to social pathologies like drugs, teen pregnancy, joblessness and crime. Not only are the truants at risk, notes Annie Harman, executive for student services and alternative programs for the city schools: "The whole community is at risk."
Yet the community is less likely to face up to an issue unprobed and unpublicized. Surely, school officials do their institutions no favor by seeming more intent on keeping a reporter off, than students on, their campuses.
by CNB