School E-mail October 24, 1996

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Subj: School Board Issues
Date: 96-10-24 17:47:21 EDT
From: James.C.Klagge@bev.net (James C. Klagge)
To: school issues list@vt.edu

Dear Friends,

At the end of our school board meeting Tuesday the chair, Annette Perkins, announced that we had finally caught up with all the agenda items. Ever since May we have had to carry over items to future meetings. We finally caught up by having a long special meeting. No doubt we'll fall behind again before long, but for the time being our heads are above water! So I thought I'd better write now!

-Superintendent: In June we voted (5-4) not to offer Bartlett a 2-year extension on his contract, which expires at the end of June, 1997. Recently we voted (6-2) to initiate a search for a new superintendent. (By implication we were announcing that we would not renew him for 1 year either, which had until then remained a possibility.) The 6-2 vote did not indicate any change in people's minds, but a desire to move forward. This issue has been very hard for the board, has involved many executive sessions, and led to some unpleasant "discussion" at that meeting in open session about divisions on the board. There seems to be agreement that we need to have a board retreat aimed at discussing and healing relationships on the board so that we can move forward in a healthy and unified way to seek a new superintendent. That retreat will happen as soon as possible in the next few months, we hope.

-NAACP: We had a meeting with representatives of the NAACP concerning the number of minority employees in the school system, especially teachers and administrators. There were some other issues but this was the focus. Because of a recent reassignment within the system we now have no minorities as principals or assistant principals in buildings. This is what precipitated the meeting. They thought we do not try hard enough to recruit or promote minorities. The administration spoke to how those things happen. Our percentages reflect roughly the population percentages in the NRV. But this is still not much and people are spread out in such a way that there are some buildings with no minority teachers, and none with minority principals. This is obviously not good. The group was quite unhappy with where we are, and insisted that something must be done to change it. We talked about the many factors involved in attracting and keeping minority teachers. Limited number of applicants (less than 3% are minority). What we do to recruit applicants. Low starting salary. Color-blind procedures for deciding whom to interview. (More than 3% of those we hire are minority.) The NAACP claimed that there are a number of qualified minority people in the NRV who are not even interviewed. I said that since applications do not indicate race, I didn't see how it could be a problem of discrimination that they were not chosen to be interviewed. (I was slightly misquoted on this in the "Current".) The administration did however indicate a willingness to interview local minority applicants, and asked that the NAACP bring them to their attention (in essence offering to suspend the color-blind filtering process). Representatives from the school board and the administration will be going to the NAACP meeting on Sunday as a follow-up, and we left open the possibility that we would hear from the NAACP at future board meetings. We ended by asking their help in dealing with the important issue of recruiting and retaining good minority teachers for our system. It may be that we are not able to move as fast on this as they wish and even as we might wish.

-BMS and other building projects: After the supervisors passed a resolution deeming the current site as adequate for a new OR a renovated middle school (indicating that they would not allow substandard acreage to be a factor for moving away from the site), we sought a joint meeting with them to explain our position. We had that joint meeting. Several of the supervisors made clear that although they had voted for a resolution allowing apparent choice between new or renovated on site, that they had no intention of allowing a new building on site if that meant tearing down the old building. They called it a "diplomatic" resolution because it didn't look as though they were telling us what we had to do. (We also discussed possible uses for BMS if a new building was built on a NEW site.) At the end of the meeting they said they would "consider" what we had presented. The item is on the agenda for their next meeting (Monday, October 28th at 7pm), and I assume they will either take no action, thereby reaffirming their previous resolution, or vote to insist on renovation. At that time the ball will be in our court to decide how to react.

I have never supported renovation, but in the interest of moving ahead and doing something I have been considering going along with that. When I raised this question in my last mailing: of the dozen who responded, all but two agreed we should just accept renovation so that something gets done. However, there are some on the school board who are not ready to give in. Partly because they cannot accept renovation, and partly because the supervisors are treading on thin ice in telling us how to run the school system. If that group prevails on the board then there would be a stand-off in which we would either hold the other 2 building projects (CMS and SHS) hostage until some mutually satisfactory resolution was reached, or we would go ahead with the other 2 projects and hold off on BMS. I should add, however, that even if we agree to renovation, there are NO assurances from the supervisors that funding will be forthcoming to actually do the renovation. The supervisors have made no arrangements for funding anything, and one supervisor, in executive session, said that buying land for schools might be prudent but would not necessarily lead to building on that land. (I voted not to certify that executive session because that is exactly the kind of remark that is not covered by the reasons for executive session and should have been made in open session.)

Since I am considering going along with renovation, I decided it was important to look into what arrangements would be made and exactly how students would be handled during renovations. E.g., would all work occur outside school hours? How would that affect costs? etc. Henry Jablonski, chair of the supervisors, once said that we could move all the students to the old K-Mart store on South Main. I didn't take that remark seriously until I heard from another strong supporter of renovation that he thought we should rent the old Grand Piano and Roses stores and move students there. I raised these issues at the school board meeting Tuesday night. Here is what I have found out. As things stand now the administration's tentative plan to deal with renovation is to build any new portions first, move as many students into completed portions and trailers as they can, and vacate the renovated parts of the building as much as they can while they are being renovated. The cost estimates for renovation do not assume that work would only happen outside of school hours. If that were to be required, it might increase costs around 3-5%. The administration has never seriously considered moving the students off site during renovation because of the problems involved. The administration was asked to look into what would be involved in moving students off-site, in terms of costs, etc. It is clear that it would cost a good deal of money to rent space and modify it for classroom purposes and move into it. Whether such arrangements could meet requirements on schools for adequate bathrooms, cafeteria, technology, outdoor space, etc. is quite unclear. Where would teachers and buses park at Grand Piano? In any case, the cost estimates for renovation do not include money to move students off site. What those costs would be, and whether it could succeed is not clear at this time. Since it takes 24-32 months from the decision to move forward on a school building project of this magnitude until the time of occupation, it is clear that a generation of middle school students (3 years worth) will be affected by this, and not benefit from it. Some people may think we should worry about these details once we have decided to renovate. But it occurs to me that many people who have supported renovation, and there are a large number, have just assumed that it would occur with students off-site, or with construction taking place at night and in the summer. These assumptions are NOT part of the cost estimates, and may not be feasible. (E.g., could workers really work at night and totally clear out all tools and material and "dust" during the day?) I don't want to ressurect the whole BMS debate, but if these issues affect your attitude towards the BMS situation, the public address time at Monday's board of Supervisor meeting may be your last opportunity to let your views be known. As always, my main concern is that people's views be based on the best available information, and that they voice their informed views to the relevant governing bodies. Your opinions are not worth much if they are not expressed to the governing bodies. (I should also add that I will only support renovation of BMS if the football field is moved to bring the space closer to the state minimum standard. However, there is no clear feeling among the supervisors who support renovation that that should occur. If they insist on renovation, but do not provide money to move the football field, what should we do then?)

At the joint meeting with the supervisors I raised the question why renovation has not even been considered for CMS. Not because I support renovation there, but because the parallels interest me. CMS is downtown, near the library. It also has too little acreage according to state standards. One difference is that CMS is an older building. Another is that BMS is close to Tech. But considering that BMS periods are about 40-45 minutes, and walking time to VT is easily 10 minutes each way, I doubt that VT is used very often, except as a special field trip that occupies some larger portion of the day. There is more vocal support for renovation of BMS, but I think there is also incipient support for renovation of CMS.

-Ever since this summer I have been composing and revising a discussion paper on academic challenge in our schools. I have a draft on this, but am not quite ready to send it out. There are many aspects to the problem, and it is made more pressing by the fact that test results in the county last year were a bit disappointing compared to the previous year. I hope to be getting this out to you soon. I don't want to delay or lengthen this letter by waiting for that.

-I don't know if any of you flew American Airlines this summer, but WE were in their on-board magazine. They, like many other media, did a story on Blacksburg Electronic Village, but with a special eye toward whether these electronic connections really make any difference to people's lives. The folks in BEV told them about my newsletter and they interviewed me. Here is the relevant excerpt from their June 15, 1996 issue of "American Way" magazine:

"[Ron] Secrist isn't the only government official using e-mail to keep in touch. School board member James C. Klagge, an associate professor of philosophy at Virginia Tech, created a mailing list that grew to about 350 people--roughly 10% of his constituents--and says he received about 100 e-mail messages in the first 6 weeks. They ranged from trivial to long, thoughtful responses about whether the county should build a new middle school."

Well there's our 15 seconds of fame! By the way, about half of the 350 of you are not residents of district F and so not strictly speaking my constituents. But I figured that most of you have a spouse or co-workers with whom you share these messages, so I probably do reach a few hundred people in F, which has a voting population of a few thousand.

That's all for now. Please stay in touch with "return" messages.

-Jim Klagge.

email: admin@gisone.com