THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 22, 1994 TAG: 9412220552
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVID M. POOLE AND MARGARGET EDDS, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 155 lines
Principal Merry White knew her students lacked dental care, but she didn't realize the extent of the problem until a state-funded dental clinic opened in a trailer behind North Accomack Elementary School.
A dentist examined 300 children from low-income Eastern Shore families and found most had six to eight cavities each.
Now, the grant program that paid for the clinic is slated for elimination under budget cuts recommended by Gov. George F. Allen. The Accomack program would continue to operate, but a similar program planned for neighboring Northampton County would never materialize.
``You can't imagine what the need is,'' White said, sounding near tears. ``It's almost a mandatory service in all the schools where there is poverty. Who's going to pay for it if the state doesn't?''
From across Virginia, a chorus of dismay is rising on behalf of an array of disadvantaged people who have counted on state programs slated for cutbacks or extinction.
The cuts could affect, among others, teenagers hoping to become the first members of their families to attend college; mentally ill people who rely on the state for medical care; and parents just above the poverty line who can't afford health insurance for their children.
Such cuts are the price Allen says he's willing to pay to fund prison-construction and tax-relief programs that he believes are favored by most Virginians.
A married couple with two children and an annual salary of $40,000 would save $46 in taxes the first year under Allen's plan, and $368 in the fifth year. About 84,000 low-income families would no longer have to pay a state tax.
Assessing the full impact of tax relief on individuals who rely on state services is difficult, both because details of the plan are just emerging and because moststate workers have been ordered to avoid talking to the press.
One local health director, asked to describe the effects on his community, referred all questions to the Allen administration.
Some human services advocates warn that tax relief will fray the state's already fragile safety net.
``It just means some real bad things,'' said Bob Armstrong, a retired sales manager from Norfolk who believes that mental health cutbacks may affect services for his 47-year-old daughter, who is schizophrenic. Allen has proposed saving $6 million by limiting treatment of ``less serious mental disabilities.''
``I voted for Allen, but God knows, I sure regret it,'' said Armstrong, a former president of the Norfolk Alliance for the Mentally Ill. ``After all the years of developing a system, it looks like it's going down the drain.''
The greater concern of some human services advocates is that Allen's budget recommendations for 1995-96 are only the first round of cuts that will escalate in the final two years of his administration. While Allen is recommending an increase in general fund spending next year, his plans call for a $200 million cut in overall spending, even after he pays for hundreds of guards for the state's new prisons.
``Clearly this is the first round. . . . The big round is next year,'' said Howard Cullum, who was secretary of Health and Human Services in the Cabinet of L. Douglas Wilder, Allen's Democratic predecessor.
Cullum said he's so concerned about the prospective cuts that he plans to form a political action committee that will lobby for programs in the health and mental health fields.
``Basically, the governor's telling these families, `You get nothing until the next century, if then,' '' Cullum said.
A look at three programs targeted for cuts by the Allen administration illustrates the tradeoffs involved in the Republican's move to streamline government: PROJECT DISCOVERY
Tellas Minor knew he wanted to go to college, but he wasn't sure how he would get there.
He got plenty of inspiration from his mother, an assembly-line worker from Roanoke who steered him toward the college education she never had.
But he needed help choosing a college, filling out the applications and paying his tuition. That's where Project Discovery came in.
The program - funded in part through a state Department of Education grant - enabled Minor to visit four college campuses in Virginia and North Carolina. Application fees were waived when he applied to two of them.
``It's a struggle,'' Minor, now a sophomore at James Madison University, said of his family's economic situation. ``The $20-$30 application fee was a great help.''
Project Discovery, which helps 3,000 disadvantaged teens set their sights on college each year, is now in peril.
The Allen administration wants to strip $16 million in annual spending for Project Discovery and six other programsfor at-risk students, and group them in a single block grant program funded at $3 million a year.
Beverly Sgro, Allen's education secretary, said the block grant would give local school systems more flexibility in designing programs for disadvantaged children.
Sgro said localities can make up for what amounts to a $13 million cut for funding of at-risk programs by functioning with greater efficiency.
Betty Pullen, executive director of the Roanoke-based Project Discovery, said she was still trying to figure out what the change would mean for kids who want to be the first in their families to attend college.
Pullen said she fears that the project, which is now administered by agencies outside the school system, may get lost in the shuffle.
``We're keeping our fingers crossed and trying to make noise,'' she said. AVID: ADVANCEMENT VIA INDIVIDUAL DETERMINATION
Ebony Turner, a seventh-grader in the program at Norfolk's Azalea Middle School, spends one period a day in a special class that provides her with extra instruction and leadership skills.
Turner said the effects have been measured in black and white - on her report card.
``I like it because at first, I was making bad grades, and ever since I was in AVID, they've been coming up,'' she said.
AVID - which steers seventh- through 12th-graders toward college and helps give them skills to succeed - is another program that Allen wants to incorporate into a slimmed-down block grant. IN-SCHOOL COMMUNITY HEALTH CLINICS
Linda Christopher was at wit's end when her 8-year-old daughter, Sheena, was suffering from a recurring toothache.
Christopher, a single mother, took her daughter to a dentist in nearby Chincoteague in Accomack County. But the dentist referred her to the nearest pediatric dentist, 45 miles away in Salisbury, Md.
Even if her car had been working, Christopher could not get time off from her job at a local pre-school center to spend half a day going to and from the dentist.
So Sheena was stuck with the pain.
Then, the second-grader came home from school with a permission slip for a state-funded dental clinic that had opened at North Accomack Elementary School.
``I signed it right away,'' Christopher said.
The dentist filled one cavity, capped one tooth and pulled another. All of it was free.
The trailer and equipment for the in-school dental clinic were funded by a state Department of Education grant program that the Allen administration wants to abolish.
Sgro, the state education secretary, said the governor believes that schools should focus on academics and that in-school clinics only divert funds from schools' primary mission.
Sgro said that in-school clinics are ``redundant'' because they provide services already available from local Health Departments.
Eliminating the in-school clinic grants should not affect Accomack. The trailer and equipment are paid for and a part-time dentist is funded through a separate grant from the Virginia Health Care Foundation.
But the cut will mean that many children in neighboring Northampton, where the schools are scheduled to receive a health clinic grant next year, will have to go without dental care.
``That's really going to be devastating to us,'' said Margie Briden, the Accomack school health coordinator. ``These children have no other place to go for these services.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/Staff
A class steering these students toward college could face cuts. From
left: Carlton Oxendine, Tony Sheppard, Ryan Dela Cruz, Termaine
Smith, Ebony Turner and Gerreyl Fleming.
by CNB