THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996 TAG: 9608060134
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 20 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 67 lines
Plans are in the works to improve volunteer efforts in the city's schools, focusing more on raising academic achievement and improving the classroom behavior of students.
At the School Board's retreat last month, board member Anna Dodson called for creation of a volunteer ``bank'' for schools to draw on. She also said schools should do more to ensure that volunteer time is spent on helping students do better on school assignments.
While increasing community and parental involvement has been a goal for years, Dodson said schools have been left to their own devices with little guidance from the central administration, leading to mixed results. Sometimes, she said, volunteers become frustrated because schools don't have structured programs or activities for them.
``I think we need to put more emphasis on that goal,'' Dodson said. ``I don't think we're capitalizing on all of the resources that we have . . . We need to put volunteers in the classroom helping with the instructional program. We need to have them doing more than setting out pencils or running off tests.''
Besides parents, Dodson said the school district could do a better job of recruiting volunteers among retirees, the military, churches, businesses and civic groups.
Dodson said her interest results in part over frustration with the school system's seeming inability to ensure that low-income and minority students, in particular, master reading and other academic subjects in elementary schools. She said volunteers could help classroom teachers by working one-on-one with students to improve academic skills.
``I haven't given up on the system being able to do the job, but I don't think the system can do the job alone,'' Dodson said.
She added: ``We just need to match them (volunteers) with the activity we want to see performed.''
Fred Oliver, assistant to the superintendent for continuous improvement, cited examples of how volunteers had assisted two schools - Young Park Elementary and Ruffner Middle.
At Ruffner, parents concerned about after-school fights among students organized a neighborhood block watch; parents kept watch on street corners at the end of the school day.
``By the end of the year, the fighting had pretty much disappeared,'' Oliver said.
At Young Park, parents relieved teachers of hallway and lunchroom monitoring duties to give them more time for classroom planning and focusing on teaching duties.
Oliver said he worked with principals, teachers and parents to help coordinate those efforts. Superintendent Roy D. Nichols Jr. said Oliver seemed the logical choice to head up volunteer efforts for the administration.
Dodson said: ``I see a need for someone to ride herd, to monitor what gets done.''
The number of volunteers - and the hours they worked - increased significantly during the past school year - from 8,900 volunteers in 1994-95 to more than 10,000 in 1995-96 and from 159,000 hours to 185,892 hours.
Dodson said the school system should set targets for number of volunteers and hours.
Many Catholic schools, she said, require parents to volunteer a certain number of hours; those who don't pay $10 for each hour they fail to volunteer. The public school system could not go so far, she said, but she suggested that schools might enter into ``family partnerships'' with parents to encourage them to make time available for the school system and their children.
Dodson said byproducts would be improved academic achievement, attendance, behavior and public confidence in the schools and to decrease the dropout rate. by CNB