THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610040189
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On the Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: 67 lines
It's time for the annual Bonehead Awards. Trumpet flourish, please.
This special honor is accorded each year to individuals or groups who go above and beyond the realm of common sense to perform stupid, senseless, totally unnecessary and sometimes cruel acts that defy all rational explanation.
Such acts abound across the nation each day, of course. And the Bonehead Awards committee usually finds it difficult to come up with top contenders from so many well qualified entries.
The winner will get a trophy - a gilded dunce cap inscribed with the words, ``Duh, I shoulda thunk before I acted.''
This year it will have to be shared by school officials in Lexington, N.C., and New York City, who punished two boys, 6 and 7 years old respectively, for impulsively stealing a kiss from female classmates.
Both school groups are no-contest, numero uno, hands-down winners and are truly deserving of the trophy.
In the first case, 6-year-old Jonathon Prevette of Lexington, N.C., was suspended and thus missed attending an ice cream party for students with perfect attendance after being observed smooching a 6-year-old girl on the cheek. He was charged with sexual harassment by an overzealous administrator and he and his family have been singled out for humiliation, the likes of which they'll never forget.
In the second case, De'Andre Dearing, 7, was suspended from class five days for bussing a female classmate, bringing down another thundering harassment charge from New York City school officials.
In both cases, public outrage over the blatant stupidity of the educators involved reversed the punishment.
Runner-up in the Bonehead Award derby this year is Roberto Alomar, Baltimore Orioles second baseman, who spit in an umpire's face in a rage over a third strike call in a late season game. Just as lame as Alomar's act is the apparent fainthearted response of American League officials to the now famous feat of expectoration. They can't decide whether to fine Alomar, suspend him or give him 40 lashes with a wet noodle.
Locally, and not too far removed from the top contenders for Bonehead honors, are six of the 11 members of the Virginia Beach School Board, who on Tuesday voted to delay consolidation of bookkeeping functions with the city of Virginia Beach. Consolidation, you may remember, was sought by the Virginia Beach City Council after previous members of the School Board sat on their hands while a former school superintendent and his chief financial officer overspent the 1994-95 budget by $12.1 million.
Now, a basically new board has staked its claim to the annual trophy by trying to distance itself from the year-old financial fiasco. It is dragging its feet over the consolidation move and is showing signs that it will never agree to it.
Now, the majority of the members of the new board have forgotten the Golden Rule, an age-old tenet every business person and family member learns from babyhood. It states simply: ``He who has the gold rules.''
To put it in context: in Virginia Beach, we have a city council form of government - duly sanctioned by the state legislature - which gives the council sole power to levy and disperse local taxes. Those taxes pay for public school operations, building roads, installing sewer and water systems, paying for police and fire protection, trash disposal and maintaining public health and welfare.
Somewhere along the line board members must account for the tax money handed to them by the council. Whether bookkeeping functions are in the hands of school bean counters or city bean counters matters little. It would, however, seem that one set of books would be a more efficient, less costly way to run a city. by CNB