ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 15, 1997 TAG: 9703170035
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
The decision to scrap a modest year-round-school plan in Roanoke County underlines the need for charter schools with the agility to respond quickly in a changing society.
FOR WANT of $143,000, Roanoke County is abandoning, at least for now, its small experiment in year-round schooling.
That decision by the county School Board is evidence of the need for public charter schools. The tender shoots of innovation and experimentation are doomed to be crushed under the weight of the status quo - particularly in tight budget times.
Inarguably, these are tight budget times. The board faces cutting $5 million from its projected expenses, while trying to preserve pay raises for teachers and other personnel. But tight budgets can be expected into the foreseeable future. When will all the pressing needs of the school system be met, and the relatively paltry sum of $143,000 be left over to take a tentative step toward a new educational approach? Ever?
Four years of study and preparation, which had been leading up to the pilot project in the 1997-98 school year, have run smack up against the same old way of doing business.
Meanwhile, 21 percent of the parents of students going into the sixth and seventh grades at Hidden Valley Junior High School had decided year-round schooling, with 45-day sessions interspersed with 15-day breaks the year round, was a promising alternative, and had signed up. More said they would have been interested had elementary schools offered the same calendar, allowing all children in a household to follow the same schedule.
Now, no families will have the choice - and they are being denied a promising opportunity. Abandoning the long summer vacation between school years would give students less time to forget what they've learned, frequent chances throughout the year to catch up before falling too far behind classmates, and regular breaks - for them and their teachers - to refresh the spirit and renew the energy needed to teach and to learn.
Skeptics point to some Florida school systems that have tried and failed to make this work. If, when scanning the country for schools that have failed these critics had looked closer to home, their eyes might have fallen on Buena Vista, which has been using the year-round calendar for years with great success.
Roanoke County families eager to give it try could form the core of an innovative charter school - if only there were such a thing in Virginia.
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