ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 4, 1996 TAG: 9611040091
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH
SOURCE: Associated Press
THE NAACP heard that victims of violence should be free to switch schools; how to split lottery profits for education also came up.
Students who are victims of violence at school should have the automatic right to transfer to another public school, Attorney General Jim Gilmore said Saturday at the annual convention of the state NAACP.
Gilmore cited incidents of violence at Virginia schools: last year's shooting of several students outside John F. Kennedy High School in Richmond; the classroom beating of a student at Richmond's Armstrong High School by three outsiders; and the recent rape of a 14-year-old girl in a Petersburg public school.
Such students, he said, ``should not be forced to return to the schools where they are victimized,'' but instead should be provided with ``a chance to heal'' at another local public school.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also discussed a proposal to urge the General Assembly to pass legislation that would return 25 percent of lottery profits to localities, based on each area's lottery sales. The returned money would be used for public education.
Elsie Carrington, president of the Prince Edward County branch of the NAACP, was pushing the proposal.
According to Carrington, residents in localities with high poverty rates tend to spend more on lottery tickets than residents in relatively affluent areas.
Meanwhile, each dollar spent on a lottery ticket is one less dollar entering the local economy. That erodes the local tax base, she said.
Carrington stressed that the money should be in addition to what localities already receive from the state.
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