ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 24, 1997 TAG: 9703240109
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
Year-round schools aren't sure winners
YOUR MARCH 15 editorial (``Year-round schools hit red-brick wall'') concerning the scrapping of year-round school in Roanoke County only highlights your limited knowledge on the subject and your poor grasp of financial reality. Like most proponents of year-round school, you use rose-colored rhetoric to tout its claimed benefits and label nonsupporters as ``skeptics'' and ``critics.''
Year-round school has been around for more than 29 years, and isn't an ``experiment,'' an ``innovation'' or a ``new educational approach,'' as you describe it. Only 3.6 percent of students in the United States are on year-round schedules, most to better utilize scarce school space in districts with heavy population growth. Seventy-five percent of students in year-round schools are in Texas, California and Florida, which have experienced high immigration growth. Although there are studies regarding the educational value of year-round schools, experts in the field indicate they are not scientifically valid due to improper methodology, lack of control groups and breadth.
The sum of $143,000 is not a paltry amount. It represents annual real-estate taxes on more than $13 million of residential property. Also, $143,000 in recurring annual costs would soon become $200,000 and $300,000 if more schools go year-round in 1998-1999, as was planned. How can you support this expenditure in light of the $5 million shortfall in Roanoke County's 1997-1998 school budget and the $100 million cost to upgrade 27 county schools and build new ones that are sorely needed?
This ``critic'' is well aware of the 20-plus-year success of an extended school year in Buena Vista. However, comparing the success of Buena Vista's Parry McCluer High School, which has four quarters, with the possible success of a 45/15 single-track, 180-day calendar at Hidden Valley Junior High School is like comparing apples to anchovies. The only similarity is that both are voluntary. These are two entirely different applications and approaches.
PAUL RADIKE
ROANOKE
Computer deficiency worries kids
I AM A fifth-grade student at Fairview Elementary School, and it's horrible that we need so many computers. We're expected to know stuff about computers in middle school, but I haven't even been to the computer lab yet.
Think about this: We're so bad off with computers that even the kids are starting to worry about it.
Rita Bishop, Roanoke's assistant superintendent for instruction, said, ``It would be difficult to have two different types of computers in the same classroom.'' In my classroom, we have two computers. They're completely different.
She also said that 70 percent of the city's elementary teachers have completed training in Macintoshs. What about the other 30 percent?
We need 477 more computers to get the ratio of 5 kids per 1 computer. Sixteen out of 21 elementary schools have a higher ratio. When they renovate Addison, they're taking some computers to elementary schools. But 170 computers doesn't equal the number of computers needed.
KYLE BALDWIN
ROANOKE
Putting death into children's hands
SO ROGER McNulty is worried that enforcing laws against selling cigarettes to kids will cut into his profits (March 1 news article, ``Kid ban may snuff out profits''). Here is someone who has violated state laws for 12 years to make an illegal profit. Now that he's going to be forced to obey the law, he expects us to feel sorry for him? No way! What I feel is outrage.
How is he different from any drug dealer? The biggest difference I can see is that the harmful substance he illegally sells to neighborhood kids is far more likely to kill them than crack cocaine, heroin or marijuana. One out of every three of McNulty's young customers will die because of the drugs he's been pushing.
If all he loses as a result of the new laws is some of his future income potential, then he should consider himself very lucky. If there were any justice, McNulty would be in jail with other drug pushers. And all property he has obtained as the result of his illegal sales would be subject to the same forfeiture laws that apply to other drug dealers.
The news article also mentions trade organizations' taking the position that the federal government shouldn't get involved in enforcement. They prefer that this be left to state and local officials. Which means the laws wouldn't be enforced at all - and that's exactly what they want.
McNulty probably thinks he was just trying to earn an honest living. But if he couldn't make an adequate income from his business without poisoning children, then he could have gone into some other kind of business.
Nobody should kill kids just to make ends meet. And if most of our state officials weren't bought and paid for by the tobacco industry, nobody would be allowed to, either.
DAVID MILLER
ROCKY MOUNT
Conscience ought to be their guide
BOTH COMMENTARIES on March 7 were right on target.
Ray Garland, in his last (just for the time being, I hope) commentary, ``Final footnotes,'' wrote with wisdom concerning the education and abortion issues that faced the Virginia legislature this year.
James Lileks (``Al Gore meets hanky and panky''), dealing with recent campaign-contribution controversies, pointed to much of what is wrong in government today. If no one was an eyewitness to a tree falling in the forest, then it must not have fallen, though the tree is down nevertheless. He says ``not only did the Democrats do nothing, but the nothing they did was also done by the Republicans."
Lileks and others speak to a need for campaign-law reform. I agree that reform is necessary, but it shouldn't have to be legislated by Congress. Rather, its individual members should raise themselves above politics and simply do what is right!
JEFFRY L. SANDERS
SALEM
Drooling over government goodies
SCOTT Lindstrom has a nice turn of phrase (Feb. 28 commentary, ``Look behind the curtain of balanced-budget magic act''), but he has a screw loose in his philosophy.
His commentary is chock-full of nonsense scripted, it would seem, from the Socialist Party. His ideas are the antithesis of the capitalistic system, which has made the United States the greatest economic force in the world. And the pity is that he is a teacher subjecting young minds, I assume, to this same drivel about the "goodies" of government giveaways (read - taxpayers' money).
His remedies will indeed require magic whereas a balanced-budget amendment will rely on common-sense votes of the American people.
FRANCIS T. WEST
PENHOOK
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