DATE: Friday, October 31, 1997              TAG: 9710300023

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Keith Monroe 

                                            LENGTH:   86 lines

THE VIRGINIA WAY THAT COMMONWEALTH IS BEST THAT SPENDS THE LEAST IT IS NO ACCIDENT THAT OUR STATE HAS FAILING SCHOOLS, DECLINING COLLEGES,OVERCROWDED ROADS. IT IS A CONSEQUENCE OF GOING FOR THE CHEAPEST ANSWER RATHER THAN THE BEST.

Does anyone in Virginia Beach have that sinking feeling? Someone should.

A judge has concluded that the city bears part of the blame for the destruction of a $1.5 million yacht that ran aground in Rudee Inlet because of inadequate dredging and out-of-date warnings.

The city pays about $500,000 a year to keep the inlet open. The foundering of the yacht may cost the city $500,000. This is called being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

It might also be called the Virginia Way. Doing things on the cheap and paying for the consequences later is business as usual. It's also a fool's bargain. Though the initial expense can seem high, it often is cheaper in the long run to do the job right in the first place - as anyone who has measured once and cut twice can attest.

The city employs nine dredge workers, but a consultant has suggested that the city ought to have at least six more working. In other words, the operation is understaffed by 40 percent. The Beach saved money, but the loss of the yacht could cost the city what it spends for a year's worth of dredging - plus a lot of unfortunate publicity and damaging word of mouth.

Virginia Beach is hardly alone in adopting the motto: When in doubt, do the minimum. It ought to be on the state seal.

Once this country built public schools as if they were intended to last 1,000 years - pillared edifices as solid as banks or Roman temples. Now our children are educated in doublewide trailers designed not to last but to be towed away. There may be sound economic reasons for it, but economics isn't everything. It sends a throwaway message. Should we be surprised if kids are offhand about math taught in a mobile unit?

Nor is it necessary to be Jesse Jackson to conclude that a failure to invest a little in schools at the front end of life can lead to the need to invest a whole lot in prisons at the back end of life.

That too is the Virginia Way. The state is borrowing heavily to put up pens while localities in need of school buildings go begging. This is not just a sign of priorities that are askew but of an unwillingness to address a problem until it has reached crisis proportions.

One of the best investments a society can make is in getting children educated so they can become taxpaying rather than tax-consuming citizens. And those with learning difficulties ought to be an especially urgent focus. A huge percentage of the prison population is illiterate, and many are LD sufferers who got no help. But it has now become a conservative article of faith that federal law requiring a free and appropriate public education for learning-disabled students is a con game.

A few college-age weasels playing the angles have tried to get classified LD so as to get an edge taking SAT tests. That's contemptible. But to leap from that to the conclusion that elementary schoolchildren with learning disabilities are ripping off the taxpayer in an attempt to get ``extra'' education is absurd.

For starters, what second-grader would aspire to LD status if he didn't really require remediation? Second, is greediness for all the educational help you can get a bad trait, or the best thing that could happen to Virginia?

Nevertheless, penny pinchers in several school systems have now decided to make it much harder for learning-disabled students. It may be cheaper to underfund remedial education, but it's woefully shortsighted to save a buck now if it creates adult illiterates who will be a huge drain on the state later.

That kind of folly doesn't result from malice but from a pervasive mind-set whose first question is: ``How can we do this cheapest?'' That often means no other questions are asked. Occasionally, we ought to try asking: ``How can we do this right?''

It is no accident that our state has failing schools, declining colleges, overcrowded roads. It is a consequence of going for the cheapest answer rather than the best. But if one is committed to turning out the cheapest work using the cheapest tools, it may not be surprising if the results are shoddy.

Even Virginia's bizarre tax system results from a nickel-and-dime approach. Legislators, fearful of the state's notoriously stingy electorate, have failed to construct a streamlined, unified tax system. Instead, in an effort to minimize and disguise every tax, they have cobbled together a maze of minor taxes, fees, stickers, stamps, tariffs and levies. The result: low taxes and plenty of them, adding up to maximum annoyance.

The late astronaut Gus Grissom was once asked how it felt sitting atop an Atlas rocket. In a fit of candor, he said: ``How would you feel if you knew every part had been made by the lowest bidder?''

We are living in a lowest-bidder state. MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the editorial page of The Virginian-Pilot.

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