
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 24, 1994                    TAG: 9406230153 
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON                     PAGE: 06    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Medium 
DATELINE: 940624                                 LENGTH:

FLAG FLAP UNFURLS\

{LEAD} First came the flag flap, a $42,151 marvel that sits on the roof of Ocean Lakes High and unfurls its flag with a sunbeam. Now comes word that the school, budgeted at $27.8 million and scheduled to open in September, is short $1.2 million for computers. The the School Board suggests making up the shortfall with money slated for renovating old schools.

Ocean Lakes High: a monument to the gizmo school of construction, and maybe a metaphor for the gizmo school of instruction: shortchanging the old and the basic for the high-profile and new.

{REST} Basic suits not just the economic times but essential educational priorities. A school system that has crowding, air-quality, parity problems has no business thinking about an electronic flag unfurler. How did what Superintendent Faucette calls this ``ridiculous'' expenditure get approved? Why didn't alarms sound loud, long and high enough to get it nixed? School officials consider it a personnel problem. Maybe, and maybe we'll know. Personnel matters are a maze from which employer, employee and the truth seldom emerge.

But the flag unfurler is only symptomatic of larger problems, procedural and conceptual.

With a budget in the hundreds of millions, top school officials have to delegate a lot of decision-making. They won't get the best people for those high-paying posts by constantly second-guessing them. But however autonomous department heads are, superintendent and the School Board are ultimately accountable for them. All need to get better at heading off the ``ridiculous.''

Most important, the new School Board needs to create a climate that promotes the frugal, not the flashy; the doable, not the ``dream school.'' The proper climate would mean projections that don't so overestimate increases in school population, or so underestimate school construction costs. The proper climate would mean choices that don't give older schools, already suspicious about getting short shrift in construction and equipment, ever more reason to be sure, and sore. The Ocean Lakes flag frill, the construction shortfall cost plenty, as much in public confidence as public funds.

by CNB