Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 24, 1993 TAG: 9302240422
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FREE TEXTBOOKS? . . . MANANA
POP QUIZ time. Children who want to do well in public school need, as the most basic of educational equipment: 1) blackboards; 2) home computers; 3) apples for the teacher; 4) handguns; 5) textbooks.Sorry, if your answer was "5," you flunked.
If textbooks were necessary and fundamental to public education, wouldn't members of Virginia's General Assembly - those stalwart champions of equal opportunity and quality schools - see to it that all Virginia schoolchildren have textbooks? Certainly, they would.
Instead, lawmakers recognize textbooks for what they are: frills. If parents want their children to have them - as a sort of status symbol, like designer jeans - they may rent them at their local schools.
The state will not subscribe to socialistic schemes to provide the books for children at no cost. So won't those knuckle-brained lobbyists at the Virginia Education Association please stop harping about it?
To be sure, the free-textbook issue has been around - oh, probably since the House of Burgess met in Jamestown in 1619. It definitely has been collecting dust on the assembly's shelf since the early '70s.
In fact, some lawmakers over the years have rashly suggested that it would be good for the state to provide free textbooks for all public-school children. These generally are the same lawmakers who say the state ought to do things like repeal the regressive sales tax on food. Their hearts are in the right place.
Oh well. One of these days. Maybe next year.
Manana.
And so it is with Arlington Del. Karen Darner's bill to provide free textbooks. As the issue now stands, the House of Delegates has passed the bill with a requirement that the state pay the entire cost. The Senate has passed a different version, saying local governments should share the costs.
Both versions, however, specify that the measure would not go into effect until July 1, 1994 - the better to give legislators time to come up with the money.
Excuse us, but we think we've heard this one before. Pass a bill with payment due later. Cluck through a re-election campaign about what you've done to support public education. Leave it to later to find the funds - and if they can't the money, well, at least they tried.
The textbook issue is, at its core, a piece of the larger issue of disparity in educational funding, over which several local school divisions brought suit against the state. A Wilder-appointed study commission strongly recommended that the state provide free textbooks as one means of reducing disparity.
Some larger, wealthier school systems - Fairfax County, for instance - provide free textbooks. But 80 percent of the local systems don't because they can't afford it. They charge rental fees - ranging from $10 to $40 per student. In 1991-92, they collected nearly $12 million in textbook-rental fees.
Most local systems do provide free textbooks to their poorest students (usually those who also qualify for federal free-lunch programs). The state then will reimburse a portion of the localities' expense.
But the state's reimbursement formula is screwy; it comes close to assuming that counties are all poor and cities are all rolling in money. By reimbursing only a portion of the locality's expense, it penalizes cities such as Roanoke that have a high percentage of poor students.
Moreover, the state's textbook policy does nothing to help working-poor parents who may have several children in school. For them, textbook-rental fees are a financial burden. Partly as a result, some children may go for several weeks into each new semester without textbooks.
That's disgraceful. Textbooks are a fundamental tool of public education. Without further delay, lawmakers should guarantee that all children in Virginia public schools have equal access to the fundamentals.