THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410220164
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
In the Beacon last week, School Board Chairman James R. Darden outlined the goals board members share: ensuring safe schools, supporting shared decision-making, maintaining academic rigor, addressing at-risk students, updating vocational education, continuously educating educators. Most parents and citizens share those goals, too.
But the public has concerns neither the chairman nor board members have candidly addressed. School spending heads the list. It is by far the city's biggest expenditure. It is arguably the city's most important expenditure. Also the least predictable and precise.
Teachers complain of difficulty getting sufficient copy paper. Parents complain of outdated materials and, like Michael Moore in the letter below, of continued overcrowding. And taxpayers, along with City Council, have to wonder why the school system seems not to have known how much money it had, why it overestimated by half the amount it needed to borrow from school-renovation funds to finish a new school and why it underestimated by as much as half the cost of some renovations, which are now another year behind. Yet the superintendent managed handily to figure in a heftier raise for teachers than other city employees.
The school system's only certainty about money is that it can always use more. Principals, teachers, parents and students who thought projects were solid find that suddenly, somehow they aren't. Who has oversight? The School Board, which unfortunately started off its new construction oversight committee with a member who sees nothing wrong with asking prospective school contractors to help retire his campaign debt.
Who could help improve oversight? City Council could help by reverting to its former policy of appropriating school funds by category rather than lump-sum - and maybe by relieving the school system of construction functions altogether. Both moves deserve serious debate.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH SCHOOL BOARD
VIRGINIA BEACH CITY COUNCIL
SCHOOL FUNDING BUDGET
by CNB