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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 16, 1992                   TAG: 9202170218
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: E2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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DOES TOTA KNOW WHAT STUDENTS NEED?

FRANK Tota's Feb. 2 commentary, "Schools alone can't do the job," makes me wonder if he knows what is needed most by students in the Roanoke city school system.

Mr. Tota identifies the problems as undernourishment, poor housing, undersupervised children, or families where there is underemployment. But is this where he is spending money? No, it is not. At one school, it looks as though Mr. Tota believes that $350,000 for a mock-up of the space shuttle and a weather station will help the city's schoolchildren.

While these classes might seem impressive to people outside the valley, many of our citizens know the true impact. They all realize that such classes are of little or no use in preparing the students for finding a job or entering college.

Mr. Tota wants us to believe that the magnet-school programs are working. He says that in the past 10 years, the city's dropout rate has declined to 4 percent from a high of 17 percent.

But nobody knows the real rate, because according to the city school department that keeps these statistics, the yearly dropout rates are for official city use only. The public is denied access to these records. So we have to go by what they tell us.

Yet last year, the same high school that I graduated from had 313 graduating. In 1980 there were around 400 graduating. It surely doesn't look as if the dropout rate is decreasing.

As a business owner, I do not think I should be made to feel responsible to help with the problems of today's preschool and school-age children. Isn't this what Mr. Tota gets paid to do? JAMES SPANGLER ROANOKE

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