ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, July 13, 1996 TAG: 9607150031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
URBAN school systems are too frequently broad-brushed as inferior, especially in comparison with suburban and private schools. Because cities have become a depository for many of society's problems - poverty, crime, drugs, teen pregnancy - the assumption too often is that their public schools, faced with insurmountable troubles, are a lost cause.
But not all city schools deserve the stereotype. Roanoke's certainly do not.
A couple of recent news items are reminders of the point.
First, chronic absenteeism at two low-income elementary schools, Fallon Park and Hurt Park, has declined sharply after introduction of an anti-truancy pilot program. The program is part of a systemwide effort launched by Superintendent Wayne Harris to reduce the city's truancy rate.
This effort is of critical academic importance. Truancy tends to be highest among low-income students, a category that includes 42 percent of Roanoke's enrollment.
Second, a Harris-designed program to help economically disadvantaged, academically promising students go to college has received national recognition in USA Today. Tutoring, special classes, financial-planning assistance and other help are provided students who otherwise wouldn't regard college as within the realm of their possibilities.
Are Roanoke's schools problem-free? Of course not. The fight against absenteeism, for example, is in reaction to the climb of the city's truancy rate to one of the highest in Virginia. More generally, the relative socioeconomic and cultural diversity within the the city's school-age population poses challenges that other systems in the region face less intensely.
But Roanoke's schools should be credited with making concerted efforts to ensure that problems don't escalate to the point of hopelessness, that the quality of education remains higher here than in many similar-sized or larger cities.
Former Superintendent Frank Tota was (and is) a figure of controversy, much of which he brought on himself. But however else he should be regarded, he merits high marks for development of the magnet-school concept during his administration. The magnet programs have helped reduce racial isolation, stem white flight, preserve neighborhood schools and widen the variety of educational opportunities for city students.
Harris has added to the magnet-school complement while proceeding with his own initiatives. The International Baccalaureate Program at William Fleming High School, for instance, is a rigorous course with international standards for excellence, geared to the city's best and brightest students.
Harris' aims, however, at more than the best and brightest. His goal, he says, is to see that no schoolchild is left behind. That ambitious goal, obviously, hasn't been achieved yet, but it's a driving force behind the absentee-reduction and college-encouragement initiatives.
The Roanoke schools' long-term objective should be more ambitious still. Already the city can make a case that its schools are better than, say, Richmond's or Norfolk's. A suitable, albeit difficult, goal would be to make Roanoke's schools a leader among urban systems not just in Virginia but also nationwide.
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