Dear Source:
The Constitutional Committee on Education, Youth and Culture will be meeting on March 6, 5:30 at the Kimelman Center Auditorium on St Thomas. Scheduled to testify will be UVI President LaVerne Ragster, Dr. Yegin Habtes and Lena Schulterbrandt, Chairperson of the Vocational Education Board. It seems that the meeting will center on Education.
As we all know, education reform is foremost on many people's minds and there will be proposals to re-vamp the educational system for the Virgin Islands through a change in Constitutional language. Issues such as funding minimums, re-organization of the Board of Education and local control of education hopefully will be discussed. Education reform is a constitutional issue because we need to re-organize just how we serve students at all age levels. Having layers of boards and departments has proven non-productive and must be changed. Having local control, with local superintendents at the island or municipal level is crucial to making education less burdensome and at the same time, giving parents more local control.
The constitutional language would ideally mandate a minimum of 1/3 of the revenues of the territory to education. Local superintendencies would be allowed for both municipalities and for non-incorporated areas. In the case of a municipality, the superintendent would be hired by the town. Superintendents for un-chartered areas would be hired by the Board of Education. And only one Board is required. This new structure would place the control of education squarely in the hands of one person-the Superintendent without needless layers of bureaucracy. Funding to education and all programs would be through the superintendent's office. Of course, education laws would have to be in the charge of the Commissioner of Education, the Board of Education and policies regarding funding, student standards, etc would be made at that level.
I hope that as many people as possible will attend this meeting to give input or simply listen to what the testifiers have to say. For that matter, I hope that people will take an interest in all the constitutional meetings that are announced, including any local forums that may be held. On St John, there will be local non-delegate forums starting in March and running through July. Hopefully, we can get some of the delegates to attend. Please get involved with the constitutional process. Your input is important to its success.
Paul Devine
St. John
Editor's note: We welcome and encourage readers to keep the dialogue going by responding to Source commentary. Letters should be e-mailed with name and place of residence to source@viaccess.net.
