Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 14, 1993 TAG: 9303120048
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MISSPENT DOLLARS COULD HAVE EDUCATED
Our School Board has spent dollars that could have educated children to pay a consultant to provide a list of sterling candidates for that august body to winnow to find our educational savior for three years.The board had selected two of the group as finalists. No doubt they could leap tall buildings with a single bound with all 600 members of the Montgomery County Education Association on their backs.
The MCEA, after they had report cards from the educational association of the candidates' former school systems, decided they couldn't find the merit that the paid consultant, the whole of the community generally, and the School Board found. The board and some of the constituents, all of a sudden, saw some clay feet on the two paragons they previously had found so grand.
It is so tough to see merit in a person the teaching bureaucracy has branded with their scarlet letter, and especially so when the educational community perceives that their new boss may have just a smidgen of spine.
Now then, the board beat a hasty retreat to a third party already consigned to outer darkness by them in the winnowing process, and with the 20/20 vision loaned them by the MCEA, selected another. This prior reject, a new, grander, more versatile, more MCEA-tractable guy, had already been inoculated with 100 proof MCEA during his educational childhood here in the county.
You know what? This new diamond in the rough knew the Virginia Law and Regulations! That, it seems, makes this new Golden Boy the answer to a prayer. Besides all that, he is a Good ol' Boy. This factor makes the salary difference of $15,000 worthwhile.
Now, the MCEA is secure that they have their union agenda in safe-keeping! They will try to continue telling us the way to improve education is to throw more money at it. Since 1974, we have more than doubled the appropriation for education and exceeded the inflation rate considerably. What has the quality of our educational system done over the same period? Class?
The county Board of Supervisors, mindful of the large portion of the population whose sustenance comes from education, timidly proposes a 3-cent increased tax rate for education, mildly noting this is only a $15 annual increase on a $50,000 house. What is the weighted average assessed value of the homes in Montgomery County? And what is the real possible increase on top of Slick Willie's proposed increase in taxes?
On March 4, your paper published an article addressing another issue, written by Betty G. Price, director of Professional Reading Services, wherein she notes that abdication of responsibility by parents is a contributing cause of the failure of the school system. What does the system propose to overcome this real deficit in teachability? How does more money help that facet?
The "Investors Business Daily" in a Reuters article notes that 42 percent of the doctorate degrees in engineering in the country in 1990-91 were awarded to foreign national men. This distortion, notes the article, is due to the failure of the elementary schools to interest students in math and science. Do not forget that a large portion of the costs of these students are borne by United States citizens.
And as an aside, who oversees the use of public housing and public services by these graduate students and undergraduates who are supposed not to become a public charge?
The educational bureaucracy will not learn, they will not change until they are hammered away from the comfortable lazy breast of the system. Script for parental choice will get their attention when they are in competition for students for their livelihood.
Let's do it. Perhaps we can yet save public education from the trash heap. The bureaucracy is indifferent to the crisis through which they are sleeping.
To the gifted, dedicated educators, my apology. When you have 100 more teachers than the state standards of quality require, and when the smaller portion of the education dollar is spent in classrooms on direct instruction, what else can be done to get the management's attention?\ Bob Anderson\ Blacksburg
Anderson was a 1983-87 of the Montgomery County School Board.