Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 9, 1990 TAG: 9005080316
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARGARET CAMLIN NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Long
Until last week, children at Jefferson and Critzer elementary schools were barred from buying ice cream in the lunchroom if their parents had not forked over a $21 annual book rental fee.
The two schools were the only ones of the county's nine elementary schools with such a policy. It was suspended after some parents complained to school officials.
The parents have sought help from the Legal Aid Society of the New River Valley to bring the practice to a halt.
Debra K. Sifford, a lawyer for Legal Aid, said she would investigate.
"My son came home crying about it," said Lynda Davis, a mother of two. "It's embarrassing and humiliating them."
The parents says they could care less about the ice cream.
"It's just the principle of the thing," Eddie Gallimore, Davis' brother, said at a meeting of parents, grandparents and other relatives of the children at Community Action last week. "This is holding a 6- or 7-year-old responsible for the debt of an adult."
Gallimore and others are worried that the children will quickly lose their appetite for school.
"It shoots 'em down before they even get started," he said.
Principal Betty Plott doesn't see it that way.
"I thought it would teach them responsibility and would teach them values," Plott said last Friday. "Parents have got to realize education is important. . . . Ice cream - you can eat it and it's gone. Education is going to be with them."
The parents strongly object to this lesson of Plott's.
"That's not teaching values - that's rubbing their face in being poor," said Sarah Gallimore, Eddie Gallimore's mother.
Ice cream was not the only thing being withheld, parents say. At Critzer Elementary, children were not allowed to buy yearbooks, as well, if their parents did not pay the book fee.
Critzer's principal, Jean Whitman, has decided to send a letter to parents saying "that I humbly apologize" for the policy. "In hindsight, it was a terrible policy," Whitman said. "My whole intention was to reach responsibility - certainly not to discriminate and not to embarrass anyone. This is not the kind of publicity we want and it is hurting my school."
Davis and others said their children at Jefferson told them color-coded stickers on trays identified the children who could not buy ice cream.
Jefferson's principal says this is not true.
The adults also contend that the principal took birthday money away from the children and applied it toward the book debt.
"That's not true," Plott said. "I never took any money from any child." Some parents also contend that their children were being excluded from field trips because their parents had not paid the book fee.
School officials say this is absolutely untrue. No child would ever be barred from a field trip because of finances, said Assistant Superintendent Phyllis Bishop.
This is the first year all the elementary school cafeterias have offered ice cream. It is being sold for 40 cents to help the self-supporting food services make ends meet, according to food services supervisor Robert Poff.
Plott said she thought selling ice cream in school cafeterias was a bad idea from the very beginning. "But since we were . . . I thought we could teach a values lesson."
Some of the parents and other relatives who gathered at Community Action last week said they believed state law guaranteed an absolutely free public education. They did not realize the state Department of Education allows school systems to levy book fees.
Pulaski County schools charge $21 for elementary pupils and $25 for secondary students per year for books and supplies.
The fees cover a small portion of the cost of buying books each year, according to John Johnston, supervisor of budget and finance.
The school system will pay $137,000 this coming year for books. But it will receive only $9,800 from the state for books - "a drop in the bucket," Johnston said.
Each school has its own policy for collecting book fees, he said. There is no system-wide policy for waiving the book fee for children who are eligible for free meals.
At Jefferson, 70 percent of the children are eligible for free or reduced meals. At Critzer, 38 percent are eligible.
Some of the parents say they simply cannot afford the book fee. Davis, for instance, is the sole supporter of two children and survives on a monthly $265 Aid for Dependent Children check.
Linda Olinger, another mother of five children, depends on her boyfriend's unemployment check. He was laid off months ago because of an injury, she said.
But Plott said she's told parents they could "pay 50 cents a week, 10 cents a week, anything you can pay" toward the book fee. Nevertheless, many of the parents never pay it, she said.
Plott sent letters to parents explaining the new policy, and individual teachers explained it to their pupils.
She said she received only two phone calls from parents who opposed the policy. Whitman said she only received three phone calls.
Bishop said last week that Superintendent James Burns, who has been out of town for several days, would meet soon with the schools' principals to settle the matter.
by CNB