THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 6, 1996 TAG: 9604060289
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
A group of educators who advise 20 local school districts locked the doors to their Williamston office building last week and went their separate ways.
They moved out only 15 months after the new half-million-dollar building was dedicated by the state superintendent of public instruction, in a speech heralding a new era of quality in technical assistance for schools.
But the political winds shifted, and the Northeast Technical Assistance Center has fallen under the chopping block of state education downsizing.
Center Director Jeanne Meiggs and less than half her original staff are still serving those 20 northeastern districts until the end of the school year. But the experts are scattered across the region.
``Everybody's working from home,'' said Meiggs, who used to drive 90 minutes each way from her Currituck home to Williamston. ``We are in the mew telecommuting mode here, and I like it.''
Although the group that brought support and training to area schools has died this spring, the concept of shared resources has been resurrected by nine local districts that want to keep ideas and collaboration flowing.
Since early last month, when the districts won approval from the State Board of Education, Meiggs has been heading the newly named Northeastern Regional Education Service Alliance, or RESA.
``For the remainder of this year, we will continue to serve the 20 counties,'' Meiggs said. ``But as of July 1st, we will be working with the nine who agreed to join the RESA.
``We're definitely in transition.''
The organization is a shadow of its former self. When employees leave the state payroll July 1, only six staff members, of about 26 this time last year, will remain. They'll be paid from funds the state once pumped into the technical assistance center that are now going to local districts.
The nine systems that have formed the RESA - Camden, Chowan, Dare, Gates, Halifax, Hyde, Elizabeth City-Pasquotank, Perquimans and Tyrrell - chose to pool their money, so they can share expertise they couldn't afford on their own.
Working with a budget of roughly $450,000, the staff will include a director, a support person and four consultants, with specialties in technology, administration, teacher education, and communications and collaboration, Meiggs said.
Under the new organization, the districts will lose a lot of support that was available through the technical assistance center, officials said. But they'll gain the freedom to use the resources where they need them most.
``The big advantage is that the school districts are going to be driving the train,'' said Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Superintendent Joe Peel, who chairs the RESA's governing board. ``We're really going to be setting the agendas and things that we want to do.''
The notion of working more closely with local schools and school boards intrigues Lisa Bartles, a learning technology specialist for the RESA who just finished a federal grant proposal for member districts this week.
Bartles said she wished she had kept a journal tracking the changes in state education over the year - an ``anatomy of a downsizing.''
``Anytime you get downsized, there's a lot of adjusting to do one way or the other,'' said Bartles, who has been under contract with the fading technical assistance center since the fall, after another state program she was working under got cut.
Officials will decide later whether they can continue to work from home or will need to find a new headquarters. In the long-distance arrangement, communication is based on computer faxing.
``You would be surprised, just with the short time, how much paper we've cut down on,'' Meiggs said. But ``the telephone bills are going to be just awful.''
The state's five other regional technical assistance centers are also breaking up, and a few are in various stages of re-forming, as the northeastern group has.
``Pretty much all of them are doing something a little bit different, because they're now more local,'' said James Barber, the state's associate superintendent for finance. ``The process has set in motion some more entrepreneurial initiatives.''
But it has also eliminated a lot of resources that poorer school districts relied on, Peel said. The districts that are too small to staff experts in every field benefited the most from the technical assistance centers, he said.
Each district now gets a little chunk of the money that used to fund the centers. And many, such as the 11 districts in the northeast that aren't joining the RESA, will decide to keep the money for themselves.
``The big disadvantage is that we've lost dollars,'' Peel said. ``A tremendous amount of help has been lost for smaller districts.''
But the new structure has inspired new ways of solving problems.
``It'll cause us to work more closely together, which we haven't done,'' Peel said. ``There's a lot of different things going on in these nine districts that we can benefit from.''
The RESA can respond quicker and better to local needs than the technical assistance center could. Governed by a group that includes superintendents, school board members, principals, teachers and a business leader, the group will pick and choose what kind of help to provide.
Already, the organization has hosted forums on charter schools legislation and facilities funding, working more closely with school boards than ever before, Meiggs said.
The group is also branching out into grant seeking. The RESA submitted two technology grant proposals this week, including Bartles', seeking a total of $2 million in federal technology funds.
``It's something we will use to leverage more money,'' Peel said. ``We're looking for grants much more aggressively.''
And officials are also staying in touch with experts at major research colleges, such as Harvard, Yale and Duke - to keep local educators on the cutting edge of education knowledge.
With a range of new challenges before her, Meiggs said she is looking forward to her new job.
``If it works as we have it planned, I think it'll be great,'' Meiggs said. ``But there are also times where I wake up in the middle of the night and really wonder.
``I keep wondering if I've left out a step or forgotten something. . . . If you haven't done it before, you're not really sure what to do.'' by CNB