THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 15, 1995 TAG: 9510130006
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
Most parents want the best for their children and prepare them for school and then work closely with educators so that their offspring will acquire knowledge and the skills they will need as adults.
But too many parents are indifferent to their duty to their children and to the schools that must teach them. Negligent and/or abusive parents more often than not doom their young to underachievement, poverty, criminality.
Youngsters clearly headed for disappointment in every aspect of life tend to destroy the learning climate in schools. They impede teaching and learning and erode public support for public education.
What to do? Empowering educators to remove unruly students from classrooms and place them in alternative learning environments is part of the answer. Posting security guards to assure the safety of students and teachers is another. Encouraging and, if need be, demanding that parents work with their children and teachers and administrators to improve youngsters' odds of success in the classroom and beyond is yet another.
The Virginia General Assembly responded to the challenge of negligent parents by legislating ``parental responsibility and involvement'' in the 1995 Virginia Omnibus Education Act.
The parent-responsibility part of the act spelled out the obligation of public-school students' parents ``to assist the school in enforcing the standards of student conduct and attendance.''
It directed each parent to sign a statement ``acknowledging the requirements of the school board's standards of student conduct and recognizing his responsibility to assist the school in disciplining the student and maintaining order.''
Parents who balk at participating in enforcement of these standards may be penalized. Those refusing to sign the acknowledgment can be fined $50 and parents who refusing to cooperate with school officials may be fined up to $500.
The General Assembly approved the Omnibus Education Act overwhelmingly - by 96 to 2 in the House of Delegates and 38 to 2 in the Senate - and Governor Allen signed it.
Some unhappiness with the law was foreseeable. Simply notifying parents of their responsibilities would raise the hackles of some. Requiring parental acknowledgment of student-conduct and -attendance standards would raise them higher. Commanding parents to assist schools in disciplining students in unspecified ways was sure to raise eyebrows as well.
But spirited objections about coercion and trampling of parents rights were triggered by characterization of the notice of parental responsibility as a ``parent/principal contract.'' Dr. William C. Bosher Jr., Governor Allen's appointee as state superintendent of public instruction, accepts the blame for that.
The word ``contract'' was the rub. A Roanoke schoolgirl and her parents headed for courts to challenge the policy. That prompted the state attorney general's office to advise Dr. Bosher that ``the law says nothing whatsoever about a `contract.''' It was a ``notice'' statute.
So there's no enforceable contract; schools have been counseled to treat the notices as notices. The attorney general's office says that only parents who are ``willful and unreasonable'' in refusing to comply with the statute's requirements expose themselves to the penalties it prescribes. Punishing parents who refuse to comply because of good-faith constitutional or religious objections is not, in the attorney general's opinion, ``appropriate.'' That's reasonable.
The attorney general's reassurance may not quiet all criticism of the state's latest effort to curb student misbehavior and chronic defiance in some school districts of educators' authority. But it ought to set many minds at ease.
Meanwhile, parents generally are quietly acknowledging the notices of student conduct- and -attendance rules. However belated, a firm state policy designed to draw indifferent and recalcitrant parents into the education enterprise is welcome. by CNB