THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 31, 1995 TAG: 9508290114
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 238 lines
AS A HISTORIC benchmark, the 1995-96 school year that begins Tuesday could be a significant turning point in the city's education system.
At the least, it will be a year of beginnings.
This year will mark the opening of a middle school, the city's first magnet program for elementary school children and an evening school to salvage would-be dropouts.
In a possible trend-setting move, Ruffner Middle School will require students for the first time to wear color-coordinated uniforms and teachers to adhere to a detailed dress code.
And in an attempt to reduce behavior problems, parents will have to sign a pledge of responsibility to help schools discipline their children or risk fines of up to $500.
Don't expect business-as-usual this year, Superintendent Roy D. Nichols Jr. said. Now entering his third year on the job, Nichols' goal is to raise expectations for inner-city students and lift the system's sagging public image.
The latest results on the state Literacy Passport Test served as a wake-up call. Fewer than half of the city's sixth-graders passed all three sections of the test, which measures whether students have mastered basic skills in reading, writing and math.
``There's no place to go but up from here, folks,'' Nichols said during a recent School Board discussion. ``I am convinced that we have not expected enough of our students.
``I think we've made excuses because of the children's backgrounds.''
While the School Board made safe and secure schools a priority the past two years, members this year have targeted academic excellence as No. 1.
If Nichols and the School Board follow through, principals and teachers will be scrutinized as never before to improve schools.
Much of the administration's effort will focus on elementary schools, aimed at early identification of kids who are failing to master basic skills in reading, writing and math.
Officials hope to reverse a troubling pattern of failure among many of the schools' African-American and low-income children, who comprise a majority of the city's approximately 37,000 students.
``Right now, we pat ourselves on the back and say our children are performing at the national median; well, that means that at best we're producing functioning students - not proficient students,'' board member Robert F. Williams said.
The School Board has put money where its mouth is, approving more than $2.7 million in new programs and initiatives for the coming year.
Among other things, the dollars will be used to:
Fund teacher training to develop a ``new model'' of urban education called PRIME at Lake Taylor High and five elementary and middle schools that feed it with students.
Open a new early childhood center, the city's third, for disadvantaged 4-year-olds at Oceanair Elementary.
Expand computer technology in the middle and elementary schools.
Open the new evening school, designed to accommodate 100 students, at Madison Career Center.
Begin an in-school suspension program at every elementary school.
Hire two resource teachers to expand the middle school gifted program.
So, along with the traditional trappings of a new school year, plenty of milestones will be recorded. These are a few highlights:
Bricks and mortar
A new Norview Middle School, a pipe dream for nearly 20 years, will accept its inaugural class with a new principal, Frank L. Steadman, who has been moved in from Azalea Gardens Middle. Former Principal Jack Leslie, who will retire in June, has moved to pupil personnel services in central administration.
The approximately $11.5 million, 153,500-square-foot building will be the first that Steadman has opened.
``It feels great,'' Steadman said. ``It's light-years ahead of the old junior high buildings. We'll certainly do a better job of exposing kids to the technology skills they'll need.''
Although the new climate-controlled school is not the technological wonder of a Ruffner Middle, opened three years ago, it's no lightweight: It will feature technology labs, an automated media center equipped with a TV studio, a business lab outfitted with computers instead of typewriters and two photography darkrooms.
Each grade - sixth, seventh and eighth - will be housed on a separate floor in the three-story building, and each will have a computer lab.
Science rooms will be equipped with laboratory desks and running water. That's a ``tremendous improvement'' over the city's older middle schools, where sixth-grade science teachers ``have got to send a kid down the hall with a bucket to get water,'' Steadman said.
One other feature of the building design excites Steadman: On each floor, one teacher placed strategically in the hall of the T-shaped wings can observe all student activity between class bells.
``Supervision and control are everything in a middle school,'' Steadman said. ``Knowing that they are under observation discourages kids from doing things. Just a simple adult presence deters things.''
Sentimentalists will watch sadly as the old Norview High, built in 1923 but used since 1955 as a junior high and later a middle school, is razed for an athletic field.
But teachers and students who endured the last years of the old school will not miss it. Rain leaked into third-floor classrooms, paint chips fell in the auditorium during assemblies, the heating system often malfunctioned, and there was no air conditioning.
``It was rough,'' said Norview Assistant Principal Stanley E. Harrison, who worked seven years there. ``The building was really demoralizing as far as the learning environment was concerned.''
Drawn to a magnet
To beef up academic offerings and give parents more choices in their children's schooling, the Nichols administration created the city's first magnet program for elementary pupils - the Academy of Math, Science and Technology at Chesterfield Heights.
The idea has proven popular. More than 500 parents whose children live outside the school's attendance boundary applied to the academy, which will expose kids to technical skills needed in the global economy.
``When we say we're going to prepare kids for the year 2000, that's exactly what we're going to do,'' said new Principal Deborah Mansfield, who helped handpick a staff of teachers who specialize in math and science. Mansfield stressed that children will get plenty of instruction in reading, spelling and social studies.
Science on each grade level will trace ``cycles,'' she said, such as the life cycle of animals, weather and electricity. Classroom teaching will be reinforced by outside partnerships, she said, perhaps with Nauticus or NASA.
``It's going to be a fun place to be,'' Mansfield said.
``It's long overdue,'' said Margaret Saunders, the city's assistant superintendent of instruction. ``All children will learn to use computers, and we intend to take them as far as they can go in math, science and technology.''
Saunders said students leaving Chesterfield will continue their high-tech education at Ruffner Middle. The next step, Saunders said, will be to beef up technology and academic offerings at the last school in their educational path - Booker T. Washington High School.
Besides expanding choices, the magnet program fits in with Nichols' long-range plan to improve the racial balance in the city's 10 majority-black community schools. Chesterfield Heights, a community school that is about 97 percent black, will draw in about 150 white students.
In addition, the school will offer adult education courses, Mansfield said, in hopes of making the school a center of the community.
Parents who live in the Chesterfield Heights neighborhood are pleased with what they've seen and heard.
``I'm excited about it, because this area has suffered for quite some time being `out of sight and out of mind,' '' said John Bilberry, PTA president. ``It's a good opportunity. Not only do we have a chance to give kids what they're interested in, it's also a chance to create strong community involvement and maybe get rid of certain problems we've had in the past.''
An evening adventure
To combat a long-running dropout problem, officials are excited about the innovative Norfolk Preparatory High School, designed to cater to 17- to 20-year-olds who are behind in school and cannot seem to make it in a regular classroom environment.
The school will operate in the Madison Career Center from 2:30 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The School Board approved a budget of $309,903.
Nichols said the school this year will be able to handle 100 students, ranging from those who have left school because of work or child-care needs to those with attendance or behavioral problems. The school is not intended, however, as a place for students who have been suspended or expelled for disruptive behavior.
``I think for students of today it provides a real alternative for different lifestyles,'' said Thomas B. Lockamy Jr., assistant superintendent of school governance. ``Because of the economy today and the needs of kids, there are many who drop out or may not have an interest in school because of the hours.
``The big thing today is choice, and I think this gives them that. We can't continue to work in the same mode that we have been.''
Of dress and behavior
Teachers and students at Ruffner Middle will start the new year dressed for success, the result of a new dress code that includes matching outfits for students and an eight-page manual of sartorial do's and don'ts for teachers.
When the school faculty approved the idea last year, it became the first in the city to do so. Their initiative has prompted central administrators to appoint a committee to consider a citywide teacher dress code.
Students at only one other city school, Bowling Park, now wear uniforms.
While anecdotal evidence suggests that behavior problems decline at schools where uniforms are worn, officials are taking another unusual step to crack down on disruptive students.
Armed with a new state law, school officials will require all parents to sign a statement of ``acknowledgment of parental responsibility'' for their children's behavior at school.
Failure to return the statement to their child's school could result in a $50 fine. Parents who refuse to meet with and help school officials deal with a problem child could be taken to court and fined $500.
Officials said they are going to take full advantage of the ``parental responsibility'' law, passed during the past session of the state General Assembly.
``We are planning to enforce it and take whatever action we must take to ensure that parents do provide support and help us enforce safe schools,'' Lockamy said. ``I think it's going to have a very positive impact on student behavior and attitudes, and I think those who refuse to comply won't be tolerated like they have in the past.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by GARY C. KNAPP
Frank L. Steadman is the first principal at the new Norview Middle
School, an $11.5 million three-story building.
Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL
Ken Russell, magnet program director, opens the Academy of Math,
Science and Technology at Chesterfield Heights this year.
A couple of prospective magnet school students check the display of
space technology at Chesterfield Heights.
Graphic
SCHOOL BOARD'S THREE GOALS FOR 1995-96
Convinced that the city's schools are safe and secure, the
Norfolk School Board has targeted academic achievement as its No. 1
goal for the 1995-96 year.
For the past two years, safety and discipline received top
priority, but board members say that serious behavior problems have
dropped because of attention to the issue. The biggest discipline
problem remaining is insubordination toward teachers and classroom
disruption, officials said.
These are the School Board's three goals for 1995-96, as adopted
last week:
1. Make Norfolk Public Schools places of extraordinary academic
achievement and accomplishment.
Progress toward this goal will be sought through implementing
administrative and instructional strategies specifically designed to
produce measurable student academic success and by expecting all
those involved with the instructional process to stand accountable
for the academic progress of the students for whom they are
responsible.
2. Make Norfolk Public Schools desirable places to learn and
work.
Progress toward this goal will be sought through further
refinement of strategies aimed at maintaining school safety,
security and discipline and through taking such other steps as may
be necessary to ensure that our schools are places where teaching
and learning take place every minute of each instructional day.
3. Increase the involvement of parents and citizens in the
Norfolk Public Schools.
Progress toward this goal will be sought by expanding the use of
school facilities by community groups and agencies, involving the
community in the development of a character education program,
increasing volunteer activities in the schools, strengthening the
role of principal advisory committees and increasing the number of
schools achieving Model PTA status.
KEYWORDS: NORFOLK SCHOOLS by CNB