THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 6, 1995 TAG: 9502060067
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VANEE VINES, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
The Portsmouth School Board on Sunday said that it didn't even want to reconsider the idea of privatizing any city schools.
Last July, in an effort to focus on more-pressing concerns, board members indefinitely put on hold plans to hire a private company to manage some schools.
On Sunday, the final day of a weekend retreat, they removed the idea from the shelf and trashed it.
``This board now doesn't even want to talk about it,'' Board Chairman J. Thomas Benn III said later.
The board made the decision during a review of priorities. Superintendent Richard D. Trumble said he wasn't surprised.
The nine-member board spent much of the weekend combing over budget proposals and emphasizing its desire to stick to the district's strategic plan - which is focused on worker involvement, goal-setting and communication within the school system.
Several board members talked of getting ``out of the box,'' or trying different approaches. But the board did not fully embrace either charter schools or privatization - two hot reform ideas.
The board also rejected site-based management. Under that concept, principals, teachers and parents would have more authority to make budget, personnel and other decisions governing their school. City schools already have school-improvement teams that make some decisions. But Trumble had hoped more liberal site-based management would encourage teams to be bolder.
``Maybe we need to talk about whether we really mean to ever get out of the box,'' Trumble said after the meeting. ``Do we ever really mean to break any paradigms?
``... More of the same will indeed get us the same results. ... We'll keep trying to encourage them (board members) to try something that is dramatically different from what we're doing.''
In late 1993, Trumble announced that he wanted to try private management of schools to see whether it could be financially efficient and help reverse flagging academic performance.
But he failed to win over many teachers, parents, civic groups and even some board members. One of the most vocal supporters of trying the concept - former board member Ralph W. Buxton - stepped down last summer when his term expired.
When Benn tossed out the idea Sunday to see whether the board wanted to keep it under consideration for the future, only three board members raised their hands in favor of the move: Louise G. ``Sis'' Walden, Lawrence W. I'Anson Jr. and Richard Crawford.
Vice Chairman James E. Bridgeford, Leah Stith, Ray A. Smith Sr. and Evelyn Hyman opted to drop the idea. The Rev. Charles H. Bowens II left the meeting early. Benn sided with the latter group.
``It's just something else that would take up our time,'' Bridgeford later said, explaining that the board's ``general feeling'' was to drop the idea. Stith said the idea was too divisive.
Board members also indicated that they had little interest in a local charter-school pilot project.
A re-examination of the alternative school program, now run by the for-profit company called Richard M. Milburn High School, and elementary school maintenance needs were listed as top priorities.
Several state politicians, apparently in response to Trumble's advocacy of charter schools, briefly discussed a Portsmouth pilot project. The legislature wants to study such schools for a year.
Walden was disappointed by the response to a pilot project and the privatization decision.
``There seems to be some notion to me that, in the future, we're going to have to address these things nationally,'' she said. ``I just want us to always be open to whatever is innovative that's going to ultimately improve the school systems of the United States of America. Portsmouth could be a leader.'' ILLUSTRATION: Superintendent Richard D. Trumble had wanted to see if a private
company could make schools more efficient.
KEYWORDS: PORTSMOUTH SCHOOL BOARD PRIVATIZATION by CNB