THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701210423
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MARK YOUNG, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 176 lines
ACADEMICALLY GIFTED middle school students citywide have been offered for the past two years a chance to match wits with the Beach's brightest in a new magnet school program in Kempsville. But for some it came with a price.
Until this school year, students at Kemps Landing Magnet School were forced to give up any chance of competing in middle school sports.
Administrators say it was a trade-off that the first year's classes had to live with when the magnet school for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders was established in 1995, but one they hoped to eventually rectify.
Their attempt to solve the problem this fall - by allowing Kemps Landing students to try out for teams at nearby Kempsville Middle School or their home schools - has led to charges of foul play by some parents.
While school officials have tried to fairly accommodate one school's students, parents at another school say it has created an unfair situation for their children. On Tuesday, the controversy will be taken up by the School Board.
The matter has surfaced at a time when students citywide are submitting applications to attend next year's magnet program at Kemps Landing. Only 200 youths were accepted into the program the first year, but it has grown to 400 this year and will be expanded in 1997-98 to include 600 students.
The policy change was a result of an agreement between principals in the Virginia Beach Middle School League and was implemented this fall. Problems arose when Kempsville Middle School parents became aware of the change.
Carol Bluestein, president of Kempsville Middle's PTA, said her group was not informed or consulted before the change was made. Her protest to the School Board centers on whether such a decision should have been made without the board's involvement.
Kemps Landing Principal Hazel Jessee said she approached other principals last year to help find a way to allow her students to play sports. The resulting agreement not only permits Kemps Landing students to participate either at their home schools or at Kempsville Middle, but it also made provisions for students from the Center for Effective Learning and the Career Development Center to participate in sports programs at their home schools or at nearby Larkspur Middle School in the case of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.
The Center for Effective Learning, Career Development Center and Kemps Landing all lack facilities for complete interscholastic sports programs. Kemps Landing has a gymnasium and some open land, but even in past years when the school housed Kempsville zone sixth- and seventh-graders, those interested in sports had to play at Kempsville Middle. Principal Jessee says that without restrooms in the gym, locker rooms, sufficient playing areas and funding from the School Board to create an interscholastic program at Kemps Landing, it will never happen.
Jessee explained that the magnet school was created with short notice in 1995, when there was neither time nor funding to create additional sports opportunities. One and a half years later, critics protest that parents and students who initially chose not to attend the magnet school program because of the lack of sports were shortchanged.
Jessee disagrees. ``I go back to the comments I made to the parents before we opened,'' she said. ``We were not designed for sports but we will try to come up with something in the future.''
Kempsville Middle School parent Cindy Harrison doesn't regret her daughter's choice not to attend the magnet school.
``She said there was no way she was going to attend without the sports and other things,'' Harrison said, adding that advanced classes at the middle school have provided an education as good as her daughter would have received at the magnet school. ``They have some nice programs there but we have sports; there are just choices in life.''
Harrison said that the current arrangement deprives Kempsville Middle students of full participation on their own sports teams.
``Maybe they can find a way for those students to play at their home schools,'' she said, referring to Kemps Landing Magnet School students who played on Kempsville Middle's girls soccer team this year with her daughter.
Michael Hamar represents the Kemps Landing parents' point of view. Hamar is president of the Virginia Beach Association for the Gifted and Talented and his son will be applying to attend the magnet school next year.
``Parents of students at Kemps Landing Magnet School were willing to initially `take what they could get,' but never intended to accept the nonavailability of interscholastic sports on a permanent basis as the price of securing adequate academic programs,'' Hamar wrote in a letter to the School Board.
Jessee says that the program the principals developed was ``an attempt to find something good for children and not hurt any other children unduly in the process.''
But Bluestein contends some children were hurt.
``We do a lot of things to try to instill school spirit - to get students to take pride in their school,'' she said. ``It's kind of hard to rationalize how a student from another school can represent your school.''
Coaches say it hasn't been a problem.
The softball squad this fall included one magnet school student who was chosen over some Kempsville Middle students who tried out.
``She was a great asset to the team. She got along well with everybody,'' said Coach Jennifer Dye. ``It wasn't the policy then to add members to the team.''
Dye referred to a policy created after the beginning of her season that allowed sports teams to expand to accommodate magnet school students without slighting Kempsville Middle students who would have made the squads.
Members of the Kempsville Middle PTA board alerted Bluestein to the situation in October. After doing some research of her own, Bluestein informed all the school's parents in her November newsletter. She said she received about 40 calls from concerned parents.
It was not until the soccer season was in full swing that parental concerns peaked. Both the boys and girls squads were expanded from 17 team members to 22 so they could each include five extra players from the magnet school.
``I did it because it allowed me to have two full squads to scrimmage,'' said boys soccer coach Jerry Rafal. Rafal said that until the night he was to choose his team he was unaware of which players were from the magnet school and which were from Kempsville Middle. ``I might have chosen more kids from the magnet school'' if he hadn't known who was who, Rafal said.
Rafal, who is president of the Hampton Roads Girls Soccer Association, said the controversy is overblown. ``Parents have much more of a problem with this than the kids do,'' he said.
Kemps Landing students who choose to try out for teams at the middle school where they live have found it difficult to make the schedules work.
At Salem Middle, for example, Coach Natalie Vanderwerf had one of the soccer-playing students in her school's zone come home early from the magnet school so she could play at Salem. Two other girls who live in the Salem zone and attend the magnet school chose to play at Kempsville Middle.
``I would like to have the kids that are in my zone play in my zone,'' Vanderwerf said, ``but it was more unfair to those students who had to miss out on part of their classes.''
She added that even the two Salem area students who played at Kempsville Middle had to leave their classes early each day to make practice.
Because of transportation constraints, magnet school students must use buses that take them to the magnet school only after completing their rounds for the home schools, meaning they start their school days later and end classes about 40 minutes later than other middle schools. The student who competed at Salem was aided by a magnet school teacher who gave up her own lunch hour to tutor the student, since she would be missing most of her last class each day.
After the soccer season, PTA president Bluestein sent out a survey through home room teachers at Kempsville Middle. Fifty-two percent of the surveys were returned. Of those, 61 percent of the 311 students who said they were interested in sports responded that they agreed or strongly agreed that ``It's not fair for Kemps Landing Magnet School students to play sports on KMS teams.''
Hamar, however, points to the unfairness of Kemps Landing students who otherwise would miss out on sports. ``What concerns me about the whole issue is that in order to get your academic needs met you should not have to give something up,'' he said.
Hamar adds that there are other cooperative arrangements between the two schools that have caused no outcry. Some Kempsville Middle students, for example, come to Kemps Landing for higher math classes, he said.
Both Hamar and Bluestein see the issues as larger than what happens with this one sports program. Hamar points to the value of having a bona fide, full-fledged gifted and talented program in attracting major new businesses to the area. Bluestein expresses concern that the whole idea of trying to provide interscholastic, as opposed to intramural, athletic programs in the seventh and eighth grades might need to be rethought.
For the principals who developed the original compromise, the goal remains to broaden opportunities for all rather than take them away. ``We're not trying to hurt anybody,'' said Don Harvey, chairman of the Middle School League and principal at Virginia Beach Middle.
On the other hand, added Kemps Landing Principal Jessee, ``I don't think we're ever going to meet every person's dreams of having everything.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color cover photo by D. Kevin Elliott
[Kemps Landing School]
Photos
[Kemps landing principal Hazel Jesse...]
[..Carol Bluestien, Kempsville Middle's PTA president.]
[Michael Hamar, who represents the Kemps Landings parents point of
view.]
Graphic
Middle School Athletics
Area Shown: Kemps Landing Magnet School and Kempsville Middle
School.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH SCHOOLS