ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 20, 1996 TAG: 9608200040
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
HERE'S AN idea for Roanoke County parents, businesses and the community at large to help its public schools offer the kind of education all apparently are demanding: a grass-roots campaign to increase the school budget.
If that would make a tax increase unavoidable, then a campaign to raise taxes.
Not to belittle School Board Chairman Thomas Leggette's call for help and innovative ideas for improving the public-school program. Incentives for employees who see ways to lower support costs and free money for instruction are worth a try. If bonuses were a small percentage of projected savings, what would the district have to lose?
Certainly, school-business partnerships such as mentoring and work/study programs can be invaluable assets. Likewise, parent (or other volunteer) helpers in classrooms and active Parent-Teacher Associations are an absolute boon.
But Leggette is suggesting more: Volunteers as athletic trainers, nurses, drug-abuse counselors, teachers in foreign languages, art, computers; contributions from businesses to pay for training future workers; PTA funding of staff positions the district can't afford. (Endowed chairs for elementary-school Spanish teachers, perhaps?)
Are these not important parts of a quality educational program that the public is expected to provide? The deal is supposed to work like this: The public underwrites the cost, and the public reaps the benefits in the form of an educated population that can develop the democratic leadership and furnish the goods and services everyone needs.
In issuing his all-points plea for aid, Leggette also proposes forming a budget committee to determine if funds are being distributed fairly on a per-pupil basis throughout the county. Given the nasty intradistrict rivalries that arose to help defeat the county's last school bond issue, this sounds like a reasonable idea.
What would such a committee make of a situation in which parents from the most affluent part of the district provided, through personal gifts and business contributions, better computer equipment or lab facilities than those available to an area where parents generally had less money to give?
The public as a whole must adequately support its public schools.
LENGTH: Short : 47 linesby CNB