DATE: Wednesday, September 24, 1997         TAG: 9709240006

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

PUBLIC EDUCATION FLASH! BEACH COUPLE PAID NORFOLK $26,000 TO TEACH THEIR SONS

Mark and Terri Colby Barr are in their 40s and reside in the Redwood neighborhood off Little Neck Road in Virginia Beach. Yet they chose to send their sons, Matthew and Noah, to Norfolk public schools' education programs for gifted students at a three-year tuition cost of $26,000.

The Barrs are pleased with their investment. Their daughter, Rachel, who is on the advanced-placement and honors track, is headed for a Norfolk high school next September. By then the Barrs expect to be living in Norfolk, settling - finally - into a Ghent house that they have been renovating for a couple of years.

Mark Barr, a Norfolk native, is a commercial general contractor. Terri is a professional mediator and an adjunct professor at Old Dominion University's School of Business and Public Administration.

Matthew and Noah graduated from Maury in three years with more than the required academic credits. Each was a Johns Hopkins Scholar (an honor awarded middle-school students whose scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test taken by high school seniors place them in at least the 98th percentile). Each completed the NORSTAR program based at Norfolk Technical Vocational Center on North Military Highway, plus assorted advanced-placement courses entitling them to college credits.

NORSTAR - the acronym stands for Norfolk Science and Technology Advanced Research program - is the magnet that drew their parents' attention toward the Norfolk schools. NORSTAR's focus is robotics and automated technology, advanced computer programming and programmable logic controllers. About 45 students a year are enrolled in the program. NORSTAR alumni, who number about 400, do well in college and prosper beyond.

The Barrs stumbled upon NORSTAR several years ago at a Children's Fantasy Fest at Waterside festival marketplace. A NORSTAR display provided information about the program. At that time, Matthew and Noah were in grade school at Hebrew Academy in Virginia Beach. Rachel was a baby.

The Barrs had read and heard all the bad things about the Norfolk schools. Court-ordered crosstown-busing for racial balance (subsequently ended) had accelerated a sharp decline in Norfolk's school population. Middle-income families, white and black, had exited the city for green acres, mainly in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. Real estate agents routinely steered home buyers with young children to the younger cities on Norfolk's borders. Military personnel and their families were known to warn friends being transferred to Hampton Roads: ``You don't want to live in Norfolk. The schools are a problem.''

The Barrs feared that their children might not be safe in Norfolk. From time to time, murderous violence in and around schools had made headlines. Weren't drugs pervasive? Wasn't discipline so lax that no learning took place?

Besides, a big percentage of Norfolk's 38,000-plus school-children are from low-income households, qualifying them for free or subsidized lunches. Large numbers are from single-parent households. With so many disadvantaged children, could the schools possibly be any good? And Hebrew Academy's student body is small and cohesive. Wouldn't the Barr children be lost in a school with many hundreds of students - all strangers - from diverse backgrounds?

The Barrs' personal investigation reassured them. Zero-tolerance of drugs, violence and disruptive conduct had markedly decreased disorder. Average class size in Norfolk approached 22.

But which high school, where most courses would be taken, would be best? As their oldest child, Matthew would be the first to go off. The Barrs noted that Blair Middle School students collected barrels of academic honors. Blair feeds young people to Maury. The Barrs interviewed Maury's principal and some teachers. They liked and trusted what they were told and what they observed. When the time came for Noah to go to high school, he went to Maury too.

Matthew had been introduced to computers early. He had difficulty writing by hand. His learning disability was circumvented by using a word processor. Matthew fell in love with computers. Noah shared his brother's enthusiasm.

After Maury, Matthew entered Cornell, to major in computer engineering. He is shifting his major to management-information systems. Cornell doesn't offer the major. Matthew is casting about for a school that does.

Noah graduated from Maury last June. He is in Israel to study at Hebrew University and spend some time on a kibbutz before returning to the states to attend the University of Michigan.

That a Virginia Beach couple paid $26,000 to have their children taught in the Norfolk public schools is a real man-bites-dog story that challenges the conventional wisdom. But there it is. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The

Virginian-Pilot.

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