THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 17, 1994 TAG: 9406170570
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940617 LENGTH: NORFOLK
Superintendent Roy D. Nichols Jr. created the $70,000 job and hand-picked his new assistant from the Georgia school district he headed before taking over the Norfolk schools a year ago.
{REST} The School Board voted unanimously Thursday to hire Fred M. Oliver, 50, a veteran educator whose 24-year career includes stints both as classroom teacher and schoolhouse administrator.
Oliver's hiring coincided with the release of a report based on nine months of work by a task force Nichols appointed to develop recommendations for improving the educational achievement of poor and black children.
Administration officials acknowledged that the ideas endorsed by the task force offer nothing that new: They rely heavily on increasing community and parental involvement in the schools, on teacher performance and on classroom strategies that stress ``early intervention'' at the elementary level before students develop a pattern of failure.
``There aren't any tricks to solving this problem,'' Nichols said in an interview. ``It's just hard work and doing what needs to be done.''
What is new in Nichols' plan of attack is Oliver, whose primary task will be to implement the recommendations. One reason lagging black achievement has proved elusive to solve, Nichols said, is that past efforts have been fragmented, with no single person to ride herd.
``We've had report after report on this topic and they've gathered dust,'' Nichols said. ``If there is not one individual who is kind of the community conscience, who says, `This is our goal, this is our priority,' it gets lost in the shuffle.''
``It gives us a person who is focused on improvement,'' School Board member Robert F. Williams said in an interview. ``It puts into a high level a position of accountability. He's walked himself out on a limb and run a flag up that we're taking major steps to improve academic success.''
If fully implemented, the suggestions would cost about $5.8 million, a relatively ``insignificant'' share of an overall operating budget approaching $200 million, Nichols said.
The bulk of the expense - $3.5 million - would be to hire 132 additional teachers to reduce the teacher-pupil ratio to 20 students in classrooms, where current class sizes swell to nearly 24 students.
An additional $637,000 was recommended to expand the school system's ``reading recovery'' program, which offers one-on-one instruction to below-average readers.
Oliver, Nichols said, brings a wealth of knowledge to deal with the challenges of teaching children who come to school from neighborhoods wracked by poverty, single-parent households and violence.
For a decade, he worked as principal of a Marietta elementary school where 65 percent of its 550 students were black and 80 percent were from economically disadvantaged families.
``If you've had that experience, regardless of where you go, you know what is needed to serve those students,'' Oliver said in a telephone interview. ``There are ways to do it.''
Studies on student performance in Norfolk schools have revealed that African-American children achieve at a lower rate than white students systemwide, not just at 10 black-majority community schools created after Norfolk in 1986 stopped busing for integration on the elementary-school level.
Community leaders who hope to see improvement said they are optimistic that the task force recommendations and Nichols' enthusiasm for solving the problem can make a difference.
``Acknowledging that the problem exists is a major step,'' said Charlene Christopher, president of the Education Association of Norfolk. ``A willingness to do something about it is a second step.''
{KEYWORDS} NORFOLK SCHOOLS STANDARDIZED TEST
by CNB