ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 14, 1996 TAG: 9603140030
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
IN THE CONTEXT of a $35 billion 1996-98 state budget, $6 million isn't a lot of money. Even so, a dispute over a $6 million item was an important skirmish in the budget battle of the recently completed session of the Virginia General Assembly.
Democratic lawmakers want Virginia to take the state's $6 million allotment of the Goals 2000 education money that the feds are offering. Republican Gov. George Allen continues to make a point of rejecting it.
The upshot was an innovative compromise. The budget as adopted does not by itself force the governor to apply for the money. But two-thirds of the state's 139 local school divisions can petition the state to apply for any federal grants for teacher training and instructional materials.
The compromise is peculiar - but then, so is the dispute.
The money, part of a program begun by President Bush, is to be spent to develop statewide school-improvement plans. But within that limitation, the states pretty much have a free hand; after all, the 48 states that are accepting the federal dollars include a fair number with conservative Republican governors.
Acceptance of the money, Allen argues, would give Virginia's imprimatur to unwarranted federal intrusion in a state responsibility. But the strings attached to Goals 2000 are apparently loose enough to cover school-improvement items on which Virginia will be spending money anyway. If the fear is of intrusion down the road, refusing the funds now won't make much difference.
Money being the fungible stuff that it is, state dollars saved if Virginia were to accept its Goals 2000 allotment could then be applied to other education items. Local school divisions would do well to sign on to a petition. Dollars are worth something, even if we're talking about only 6 million of them.
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