Honoring Top Public School Performers

The News & Advance
Published: May 1, 2008

Public education in America is replete with problems; there’s no use denying that fact. Public schools in Virginia — and, yes, right here in Central Virginia — have their share of problems, too.
But there are also success stories as was the case earlier this week.
On Wednesday, the state Board of Education announced that Lynchburg City Schools had been named a “Distinguished Title I School Division,” one of only 13 divisions honored in Virginia. The recognition results from the division’s efforts to better address the academic needs of economically disadvantaged students.
The state board also announced seven individual schools throughout Central Virginia — in Lynchburg and the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Campbell and Nelson — were being honored as “Title I Distinguished Schools.”
The phrase “economically disadvantaged students” sounds oh-so politically correct. We’re talking about poor students, whose parents or caregivers simply can’t afford to give them the educational perks most of us take for granted. A computer, high-speed Internet access, pens and paper, a warm coat in winter, clean clothes. All those things that, taken together, contribute to a successful academic career.
The Lynchburg public school system, while an excellent division, is nonetheless a division that faces some extreme challenges. Let’s just admit it: Lynchburg is an urban school division with its share of problems that any urban division across the country faces.
w More than half of the students in Lynchburg public schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
w The graduation rate for Lynchburg schools, in the 2006/07 school year, for all students is 63 percent, compared to a state average of 80 percent.
w The division graduated 48 percent of its black students (state average, 72 percent) and 76 percent of its white students (state average, 84 percent) during the same reporting period.
As any teacher will tell you, “economically disadvantaged” students are the students who are the most costly to educate. They have the greatest need and the fewest resources. Schoolchildren who have no computers at home are that much more behind when they come into the classroom with far less experience than their more well-to-do peers, for example. And the challenge only grows from there.
The city’s public school system also faces the problems of attracting and retaining teachers and providing them with the resources they need to do their jobs; this paper has reported the burden many public school teachers shoulder when they have to go out and purchase supplies for their students out of their own pockets.
Then there’s the problem of facilities and maintenance. Over the last decade, for example, Lynchburg has spent tens of millions of dollars renovating existing schools (E.C. Glass High School) and building new structures (Linkhorne Middle School). Staring the division — and city taxpayers — in the face is the question of Heritage High School, a school much younger than Glass but facing extremely serious structural shortcomings.
All the while, a plethora of private schools have popped up over the last years, draining away students from the public system, ultimately costing the system millions of dollars in state and federal monies. In the end, the public schools are left with the greatest number of students who are the most costly to educate.
Despite the many challenges facing the city school system and the many shortcomings that demand action, Lynchburgers need to know they have a public school system to be proud of but one that also needs protecting and proper funding.
That they do as good a job as they do, given limited public support and lukewarm backing from some sectors of the city, is all the more amazing and laudable.