ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 21, 1996 TAG: 9605210111
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
FOR EACH CHILD the schools cannot find, the city school system loses $600 in state funding.
Residents have shown increased unwillingness to cooperate with a public school census because of fear stirred by a string of homicides, says the group taking the census.
``We did notice a decrease in the number of people who answered the door [for census takers],'' said Mary Ellen Rives of the Virginia Commonwealth University Survey Research Laboratory.
There has been a 25 percent drop in response in the last two weeks, she said. The census started in March and will continue through July.
The city school system must count Richmond children every three years. The results determine how much money city schools will get from the state.
For the first time, the census is going door to door at each of the city's more than 96,000 homes, apartments and shelters. VCU's Survey Research Laboratory is conducting the count for the school system.
``It's critical to have the most accurate count possible,'' said Susan Hogge, the public schools' budget director. ``We expect that going door to door will help ensure that.''
But fear generated by the recently publicized unsolved killings of more than a dozen women age 55 or older apparently has made people reluctant to take chances with strangers coming to their homes. The killings have occurred over the past decade.
``We've had a number of people that don't want to provide any information on how many people live there, which I can understand, especially if it's a single woman living there,'' Rives said.
``We have had some people who said to get off their property and not to return,'' she said. ``It's pretty poor timing, really, for us to be walking the neighborhoods.''
She said the more than 100 census takers are not allowed to go into someone's house, even by invitation. They work seven days a week, but only during daylight hours.
They work in teams of four to six, and interviewers wear T-shirts with the colorful school census logo and carry letters from the Police Department and their VCU identifications, Rives said.
For each child the schools cannot find, the city school system loses $600.
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