ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050025
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
A spokeswoman for Pulaski County teachers called on the Board of Supervisors Monday night to help reverse some of the negative ways people have come to regard public schools.
"I ask you to begin tonight to speak well of our schools and then put concrete actions behind your words," Dana DeHart, president of the Pulaski County Education Association, said at a public hearing on the 1996-97 budget.
The board is to adopt the budget June 24. No changes are expected from the spending plan presented at the hearing. It provides $116,000 more in county revenue for schools over the current year.
The School Board had asked for $371,612 in new county money. The $116,000 amounts to $23 per student, Superintendent Bill Asbury said.
"We cultivate our children because we love them, but also for the very selfish reason that, five or 10 years from now, our children will be our sheriffs and board members, our bankers and wage earners, our contractors and carpenters," DeHart said.
"What we rarely talk about, though, is that from the same school population will also come the chronically unemployed, the single mothers, those needing welfare and those deserving incarceration," she said.
"Based on what we know about what the average American worries about, I believe that, if there were something we could do to guarantee an increase of the first group and drastically reduce the number of the second, short of breaking the law or the principles of our faith, we would do it, no matter what the cost."
She suggested continuing investments in school facilities and professional salaries for professional teachers would be a good start.
"If you respect our schools and consider them a priority, your words of support are important. But more important are actions that show our children and our community that we are all willing to take risks and invest our scarce resources, even when it hurts, to add meaning to those words," she said.
The only other speaker on the school budget was Thomas A. Simpkins, who will have two children in the Snowville Elementary School next year. He said the school has excellent teachers but they are stymied by overcrowded classrooms, a lack of teaching materials and "horribly inadequate" facilities.
Another speaker at the board meeting was Elrica Graham, representing the Citizens Courthouses Committee, asking the board to consider reserving half the third floor of the restored stone courthouse for historical exhibits.
The third floor of the building was left unfinished when the courthouse was rebuilt, following a fire at the end of 1989, but the proposed county budget includes funds to finish it.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB