THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9606280439
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALETA PAYNE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 100 lines
In the last 13 months, the school division has had three superintendents, two reorganizations, 23 board members, two financial crises, one unforgettable special grand jury report and enough upheaval and tension to frustrate and demoralize some of the people most closely associated with the day-to-day running of the schools.
In that same period, the city's schools produced 12 National Merit Scholarship finalists, a National Achievement Scholarship finalist, the WordMasters National Champions, the first and second-place Naval Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps units in the nation, six state champions in the Future Problem Solving competition, two state athletic team champions, a variety of state individual champions - and one kindergartner who called an ambulance for his mother having a seizure, then ran out to catch the bus because he didn't want to miss school.
The challenge to the newest school board, which takes office July 1, is to avoid the effects of the first set of circumstances while rebuilding the kind of district that excels at producing the second. But before any of that can happen, they've got to figure out how to be a board. As a group, they share slightly more than three years of board experience.
It is a curiosity of public service by committee that one person can bring progress to a screeching halt, but it takes a majority to get anything done. In this case, at least six people will have to group together around any single issue to move it along.
We know about the board members' professional backgrounds (heavy on legal types - four are or have been lawyers, three are or have been in law enforcement); a little about their families (nine have or had children in the school division) and even something about the base of support that got them elected or appointed (another story in itself).
But, it's harder to say how they will function as a board because that will be determined by how they get along with each other, the community and staff. And that's a work in progress.
Since the election, the new members have attended board meetings as a group, even sitting in on closed sessions. Unfortunately, there is much, much more to learn and no time to waste.
They must come to terms with a new superintendent and find some balance between micromanaging his work - an issue which helped drive him from his former job and can indefinitely stall any progress in a division - and trusting or relying on the administration too much. Their predecessors on the board could describe in vivid detail just where that gets you.
At the same time, someone has to begin rebuilding employee morale, which is rolling at low tide right now, tepid and lapping about the ankles of people who have been with the division long enough to have taught some of the board members. Over the last decade, there has been an enormous drain on the collective memory of the school system as too many employees left or were forced out against their will.
And while a startling number of those who remain still identify themselves by allegiances to long-gone superintendents and the power-mongers of Princess Anne County, they are also the only ones who remember how federal aid used to be calculated or why a particular boundary was drawn that way in the first place.
I once covered a board in California made up entirely of novices. They replaced nine board members who had either refused to run for reelection, been defeated or recalled.
The new trustees, as they are called out West, were a mix of bright, hard-working people. A little heavy on current and retired educators, very, very light on political experience and a deep understanding of what it takes to move a school division forward. They spent much of their first board meeting giggling. Not a light-hearted, what-fun-we're-having giggle.
The night grew late as they stumbled through Robert's Rules of Order, tried to figure out who should be chairman, and struggled to give every decision the time and attention it needed. And they giggled like someone who had come to realize that the church was full, the Trumpet Voluntary was playing, but getting married wasn't such a good idea after all.
They realized that they had gotten just what they'd asked for and that it was an awesome responsibility.
Luckily for those board members and for that district, they also came to understand that certain basic rules of common sense and management bring order out of chaos in most situations. They learned which of the people who worked for them to go to with a question, and to respect those people for their breadth of expertise. They learned to challenge those answers that defied logic but not to obstruct for the sake of obstructing. But most of all, they learned that the strength they had as a group far outweighed the strength any one of them had an as individual.
All of the new Beach board members should not and cannot agree with the administration or each other on everything. If ever a group was put in place with the charge to debate and question aggressively, this is it. But they also must listen and learn and never, ever assume that their way is the only way. And they must struggle to prevent personalities from blocking the completion of the tasks at hand.
Ultimately, whatever the cause that brings the speakers out on a given Tuesday night, whatever the pressures from without or within to make a decision quickly or without sufficient information, it is my hope that they will make the sort of choices that preserve the hard work of so many people who have continued to do their jobs under overwhelming circumstances. I hope they will limit the opportunities for those who enjoy seizing on the division's problems.
And I hope they will always keep in mind that the aim and end of every decision they make must be to further the success of the girls and boys who fill this city's classrooms and who give purpose to everything we all strive to do.
The two little boys who call me ``Mommy'' and all our children deserve at least that. by CNB