THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 24, 1996 TAG: 9605240503
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 82 lines
A divided School Board voted 5-2 Thursday to allow two elementary school principals to add sixth-grade classes in the fall, an education experiment designed to provide the students with a more nurturing environment than middle school.
Like most elementary schools in Virginia, the two schools involved, Bowling Park and Ghent, now go up only to fifth-grade.
Principals Herman D. Clark Jr. of Bowling Park and Julia Kidwell of Ghent had wanted to expand their schools to include grades six through eight, arguing that students often suffer behavior and academic problems in the larger and more impersonal middle schools.
Clark also said students from Bowling Park often clashed with children from a nearby rival neighborhood when together in middle school.
Cautious board members opted to let the schools add only one grade, at least for a year, to test the change. The schools might be able to add the other middle school grades if student performance improves, as the principals expect.
The board moved slowly, in part, out of concern that the idea would increase the ``racial isolation'' ofblack students at Bowling Park, one of the city's 10 nearly all-black schools.
The neighborhood schools were created in 1986 when the board stopped cross-town busing of elementary students for desegregation purposes. The board at the time promised that they would not extend the neighborhood school concept to the city's middle and high schools.
``I don't want to get into a political can of worms over it . . . unless I know there are educational benefits from it,'' said board member Anita Poston, who voted against the plan along with James Herndon.
Despite the concern, board Chairman Ulysses Turner said Bowling Park, which has a long record of achievement, should be given a chance to try an idea that could benefit students in the long run.
``This request is being driven by this school and its community, and not by the board - and that's good,'' Turner said. ``I think the board has to be willing to allow creativity.''
At a public hearing held Tuesday at Bowling Park, City Councilman Herbert Collins had urged the board to move carefully or risk re-segregating the city's schools. Allowing these two schools to experiment might be OK, but he worried about the implications citywide.
``I think we may be setting a dangerous precedent,'' said Collins, one of three blacks on the City Council. ``It's much bigger than Dr. Clark. I'm a little apprehensive that we might drift back to neighborhood schools, and it would limit our children's experiences.''
Parents, though, overwhelmingly supported the idea at the hearing.
``I'm 100 percent - I want him to stay here,'' said Carolyn Burrus, mother of a first-grader at Bowling Park who hopes the school is allowed to expand through grade eight.
``They have a good environment here, the teachers care about them. They go to the middle school and they don't get the individual attention.''
At Thursday's meeting, Superintendent Roy D. Nichols Jr. offered what may be a solution to worries about racial isolation: The schools will be designated as K-6 ``magnet'' schools, meaning that students citywide could apply to attend.
Parents with children already at Ghent and Bowling Park could opt to send them on to middle school instead, Nichols said.
``I think the important thing is that parents are being given a choice,'' Nichols said.
Besides racial concerns, the proposal raised red flags about the state of the city's middle schools.
Herndon said he voted against the two principals' proposal, in part, because it doesn't address the real problem - How to improve the middle schools. Once children finish elementary school, some parents send them to private schools because they perceive that the city's middle schools have too many discipline and academic problems, school officials said.
``One of the real dilemmas we have is that we don't have an appealing environment at the middle school level,'' Herndon said.
Administrators said the cost to add sixth-grade at the two schools would be relatively small: about $12,000 at Ghent for instructional supplies and at most $50,000 at Bowling Park for an additional teacher.
``I know what's needed for this community, I've been here for 15 years, in and out of homes, and my parents believe in us so much,'' Clark said. ``The ultimate goal, as I see it, is that the children learn - whatever it takes - they learn.''
KEYWORDS: NORFOLK SCHOOLS by CNB