DATE: Friday, November 21, 1997             TAG: 9711200610

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Education 

SOURCE: - Philip Walzer

                                            LENGTH:   27 lines

EYES AND EARS

STATE

The meeting that never ends. . . . At Monday's Board of Education meeting, President Michelle Easton pushed at least a half-dozen agenda items to next month's session to avoid going overtime.

She methodically went through the items to be held over: ``J, K, L, . . .''

After she finished, board member John W. Russell, the yukster in the group, commented: ``Are we meeting for two or three days in December?''

Swimming against the tide? . . . The House Education Committee last year killed a charter-schools bill on an 11-11 vote. The committee's chairman, Del. J. Paul Councill Jr. of Franklin, was among the few Democrats on the panel who supported the bill.

Last week, Councill lamented that his colleagues were a little out of step with the political winds: ``Both (gubernatorial) candidates supported charter schools, the president of the United States supports it, the national secretary of education supports it, Congress supported it. Everybody but the Democrats on my committee supports it.''

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