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The list of things we like about Rappahannock County is long. There’s the neighborliness of the people, the beauty of the mountains, the richness of natural resources, and on a more mundane level, the low crime rate, the low tax rate, and not having to show two major credit cards to write a check.
Now there’s a newr entry: excellence in and commitment to education. And it’s moving to the top.
The signs are everywhere.
First look at the schools. With the completion of the long awaited capital outlay project, we have a practically new high school. It has modem, fully equiped science labs and a beautiful new library so conducive to serious studying. The School Board is now' w orking on securing a state-of-the-art electronic classroom through the Governor’s Initiative for Educational Technology. There’s a new computer lab at the elementary school, a newr foreign language program, and a new art program. Rappahannock students gained enrichment on the Chesapeake Bay, at French camps and space camps, the Governor’s School, and other summer programs for the gifted and talented, and here in the county we offered for the first time our own summer program, an interdisciplinary workshop on The Mountains which drew heavily on Rappahannock’s wealth of “people” resources. These same resources are also going to be tapped throughout the school year by the new Community Resource Coordinator.
Scores on standardized tests are up, ranking Rappahannock students above national and state averages, and still the superintendent is planning a mathmatics offense to improve the performances in that field.
Volunteers are stepping forward to offer their help. We could always count on the RCES PTA to get the extras that the school budget wouldn’t Cover, whether it was new equipment for the playground or radios for school bus communications. For the past several years, the Rappahannock Association for the Arts and the Community has brought a wide range of programs - all of surpassing excellence - to both schools. High school athletics have enjoyed active support, both from civic groups and clubs and from individuals, that has resulted in new scoreboards, a track, trophy cases, trophies, and uniforms. And now we have a volunteer working on the establishment of a public school foundation which would provide Rappahannock’s children with cultural and artistic extras.
Then there’s the Rappahannock Literacy Volunteers who are teaching people how to read and will soon offer a GED preparatory course for those who want to take that high school equivalency exam.
We have the Child Care and Learning Center where th£ county’s youngest “students” and their grateful parents get day care that would be exceptional in any sophisticated urban setting; here in a little rural county of 6,000, it qualifies as a minor miracle.
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