THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996 TAG: 9603080252
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On The Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
There are 50, count 'em, 50 people running for seven seats on the School Board.
That's 7.1 people per seat.
This is an interesting number, considering the blistering the sitting board took recently at the hands of a special grand jury, which was called to look into the causes of the Virginia Beach school budget debacle.
As a matter of fact, the grand jury called most of the current crop of members unfit to hold office and suggested that they resign or face charges of malfeasance. So far, five of the seven have done so.
One, Tim Jackson, said he'd rather fight than quit.
The other, Ferdinand V. Tolentino, has yet to decide what to do.
Meanwhile, the herd of aspirants for the board can only make you wonder what they're thinking about. Especially, after the public shellacking the current board has taken.
Nevertheless, the roster of candidates, printed elsewhere in today's Beacon, looks promising.
A survey of the candidates indicates that all of them are motivated - make that determined - to turn things around for the city's school system. As one of them put it, the top priority is to ``return credibility and financial stability'' to the school system.
On May 7, election day, when the rhetoric finally dies and the campaign dust settles, the School Board lineup will be solidified and odds are that lineup will be made up of all new faces - rookies.
The only potential returnee would be Donald Bennis, a member who is running to keep an at-large seat he was awarded last year by the Circuit Court.
The new guys will be people who never have experienced the joys of holding public office, the political pulling and tugging that faced their predecessors, the public demands and the niggling details that sometimes turn into giant disasters.
They will learn from scratch what it means to beg money from the City Council for teachers' raises, school construction, new educational programs, buses, utilities and insurance. They'll be faced with matters of discipline for teachers, students and administrators and a hundred unforeseen crises and they will be expected to comport themselves with wisdom, dignity and compassion.
Probably the most ticklish situation of all for the new members will be working with a brand new school superintendent who is not of their choosing.
It was the current board, the sitting board - or what's left of it - that selected Timothy Jenney, formerly school superintendent of Greenville, S.C.
Jenney arrived in Virginia Beach in mid-February from South Carolina, where he headed the state's largest school system for 18 months. His departure apparently was hastened by a contentious school board that insisted upon micro-managing the school system there.
Whether Jenney has jumped from the frying pan into the fire remains to be seen as the makeup of the new Virginia Beach School Board shakes out.
There are some possible scenarios. One: the two parties work together and learn together to restore public faith in the school system. Two: they butt heads and ensure the continued free fall of a system once deemed to be one of the best in the state.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH SCHOOL BOARD by CNB