THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507290154
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
The School Board's search for a new superintendent proceeds apace - a snail's pace.
The board has approved 12 community groups to be represented on a su-per-in-tend-ent search advisory com-mit-tee. The list comes late, and it comes heavily weighted to educators: two members of the School Board and one delegate each from the Association of Elementary School Principals, the Association of Secondary School Principals, the Virginia Beach Education Association and the Virginia Beach City Schools, reportedly a non-VBEA teacher.
How many other employees get to help choose their top boss? It may take educators to know a good (or a bad) top educator when they see one. But surely a lesson learned from recent history is this:
A superintendent must be knowledgeable not only about the latest pedagogical theories but about finance and administration. He or she must be attuned to the results the community as a whole expects and the burdens, financial and otherwise, it can bear. The all-too-familiar refrain of recent years - ``for the children'' - is hardly reason enough to budget so badly that schools run short of money, teachers and textbooks.
Other groups asked to name a representative to the search committee are the Student Council Association, the Virginia Beach Coun-cil of PTAs, City Council, the Council of Civic Organizations, the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, the Junior League of Norfolk-Virginia Beach and Visions, a business group.
Let's hope that among them are more than a few who understand school and municipal finance - and who have or have had children in public school. And since some 70% of Beach residents have no children in public school, how about naming a plain old taxpaying resident to the committee, too?
The committee's precise role in the process is still undefined. If the current scuttlebutt - that interim superintendent Jim Pughsley is proving himself eminently up to the job - maybe the committee's first (and only) job is this: to suggest a halt to spending big bucks on a national search pending a careful look at home. by CNB