THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 22, 1995 TAG: 9506200090
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
AN AMBITIOUS PLAN to create ``magnet'' programs at six majority-black schools is widely endorsed by parents, School Board members were told last week.
``I think we're on the road to some greatness,'' said Kenneth Russell, a former assistant principal at Tanners Creek Elementary who has been named director of a new office for magnet schools.
City school officials last month applied for an $8.7 million federal grant to finance the program over the next three years. Key goals are to raise academic achievement at the six schools and to improve their racial balance by luring white students to them.
By June 15, more than 600 parents had returned surveys distributed to gauge interest. Of the 453 surveys Russell had analyzed by last week's School Board meeting, 83 percent said they would send their children to a magnet school.
A key finding was that 74 percent of the parents said the program's quality was more important than the neighborhood where the school is located. Russell said that means many white parents would send their kids into the majority-black schools.
School officials said in the grant application that selling the program to white parents could be the biggest obstacle to success.
Superintendent Roy D. Nichols Jr. has pushed the magnet program as a school-choice issue, partly in response to state and federal education-reform initiatives that he fears would undermine public schools: charter schools, supported by Gov. George Allen's administration, for example, and vouchers and tuition tax-credits for parents to send kids to private schools, favored by many conservative lawmakers in Congress and the state General Assembly.
School officials hope to hear by next month whether the U.S. Department of Education will award the magnet grant.
Even without federal money, local educators have plans this fall to open a math, science and technology magnet program at Chesterfield Heights Elementary.
Students are being recruited for Chesterfield, and so many parents are applying that Russell's report at last week's board meeting, prepared the previous day, was outdated by the time he presented it.
The report identified 289 applicants, but Russell said Thursday that 50 more had applied. Of the 289 students, 77 were white, Russell said.
The goal is to improve the magnet schools' racial balance by about 3 percent each year. At Chesterfield, that would be achieved in the coming year by enrolling 12 white students.
Russell said space exists for 50 additional students at Chesterfield, one of 10 majority-black community schools created when the city stopped busing elementary children for desegregation purposes in 1986.
Neighborhood kids who live within the school's attendance zone will be guaranteed a slot, Nichols said. For students outside the zone, priority will be given to those who truly have an interest in math, science and technology, Russell said.
Unless the federal grant is approved, parents who live outside the attendance area will have to provide their own transportation, at least in the initial year, because money is not available for busing, Russell said.
The Chesterfield program will emphasize computer and technology skills and ``hands-on'' math and science labs. Kids will learn to work cooperatively in groups and also will study a Pacific Rim language.
The five other proposed magnet schools include one high school, Booker T. Washington, where officials hope to offer an International Baccalaureate program.
The other magnets would be opened in elementary schools: Jacox, visual and performing arts; Camp Allen, foreign languages and international studies; James Monroe, Montessori; and Tidewater Park, traditional studies. by CNB