Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509250001
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV16 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Long
At least that was how the Pulaski native came across to Wythe County teachers as the main speaker at the start of their 1995-96 school year.
He drew the most applause when he criticized a state policy that counts expelled students among a school's dropouts, making it appear from the numbers that "you're not doing all that you're supposed to be doing, when you've done all that could be done," he said.
"It's still a black mark against you, and that's not fair," Penn said. "I don't think you should let a child stay in school that disrupts the learning for 25 or 30 others."
Penn said violent students effect classes out of proportion to their numbers "because they keep everybody from being able to function properly." He said part of the blame should be put on apathetic parents, more interested in taking a teacher to court than backing him or her - unless athletics are involved.
"The coach kicks a kid, they would say 'He's trying to inspire him.' You kick a kid today, they'll cut your legs off," he said. Whenever he was disciplined, he said, "I took the punishment and went home and kept quiet about it, because I didn't want to be punished again."
Penn told of becoming exasperated with a parent and asking if she knew the difference between ignorance and apathy. "She said, 'I don't know and I don't care.'''
For about 19 years, Penn has been superintendent of Surry County schools. When he took the job, the average classroom overflowed with 40 to 50 students, most of them black because whites were opting for private schools. Few went to college.
Today, classrooms average 17 students. The racial mix is about 70 percent black and 30 percent white, more closely reflecting the county's population. Dropout rates are down, test scores up, and 94 percent of last year's graduates planned to continue their education.
Penn said local government changed about the time he became superintendent, with more blacks on governing bodies, "and education was the motivator for the change." Eighty cents of every dollar in local revenue went for education, although now budget-cutters are active in Surry County as elsewhere in the country and school funding is among the targets.
"Maybe I stayed too long," he reflected, in a rare moment of being less than exuberant. "But, still, they're funding me well."
Penn grew up in Pulaski, where he is still a partner in the family-operated Penn Funeral Home.
He graduated from Christiansburg Institute, the regional all-black school that operated from 1866 until 1966, when integration made it no longer necessary. He even drove one of its school buses.
He managed a musical group whose members included his brothers. They played in Virginia and neighboring states, earning money for college tuition. His high school football coach became head coach at Bluefield State College and recruited Penn, who had planned to enter the military, to graduate from college and teach.
Penn later went to what is now Radford University, then got his doctorate from the University of Virginia. "And then someone told me I should be in administration," Penn said with a chuckle.
His first comments to the Wythe teachers was to note that, as with many church congregations, they tended to hang back and leave the front rows vacant.
"Teachers and educators are reluctant to come to the front," he said. "We are comfortable staying in the back ... That's a concern of mine," he said. "What I ask you to do is stand up and be a part of your organization ... You have to ask yourself a question: If everybody here was just like me, what kind of school would we be?"
Penn, of course, had been in the front row.
"You know, being black ... there was a time when I had to sit on the back of the bus. And now that I can come up front, you saw where I was sitting," he said.
"And now we've gotten past the color thing, people get on you when you've got a little weight. Quite often, people mistreat you if your hair recedes a little bit and you gain a pound or two. I've gained a pound or two," he said with a grin.
There was a woman at his high school reunion who kept pointing that out to him, he said. When she did it for a third time, "I looked at her and said, 'Hell, you're ugly. And I'm going on a diet. What are you going to do?'''
In more than 30 years as an educator, he said, he has seen that "the more things change, the more they remain the same, for teachers."
When the nation failed at desegregation, he said, the task fell to schools "and we did a pretty good job." When teen pregnancies went up, he said, teachers had to teach sex education. When traffic accidents became a concern, it was driver education. When it was drugs, suddenly there were school programs on substance abuse.
"We have been the least-appreciated, most counted-on, least-paid profession," he said. "We teach the doctors how to be doctors. We teach the lawyers how to practice law. We teach the engineers how to be engineers ... You won't see many lawyers stay in the back. You won't see many engineers stay in the back. Teachers stay in the back."
by CNB