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School Boards
Must Decide
On Couseling
: ■ .
MAURICE A. WILLIAMS III
Capital News Service
Local school boards have until July 1 to decide whether parents will have to request that their child receive or not Receive counseling.
In a 5-4 vote, the Virginia Board of Education on Jap. 19 delegated this decision to local school boards rather thaft to die state.
As the policy stands now, parents must notify their child’s school in writing if they do not want their child to be counseled. But soon school boards will have to choose between an “opt-in” or an “opt-out” policy. Few parents previously opted out.
“It will probably bring renewed discussion of counseling before school boards,” said William C. Bosher Jr., •superintendent of public instruction for the Department of Education.
After two years of study, he said, board members reached a reasonable conclusion.
“They took a very balanced approach and decided that communities across Virginia are very different,” Mr. Bosher said. “They decided that it was a local issue — I fully agree with the decision.”
James P. Jones,, president of the State Board of Education, who voted for the measure, said he thinks it will increase parental participation in children’s education.
“We prefer the action of the board to what might have happened,” said Robley S. Jones, president of the Virginia Education Association. ■ t
The VEA president, however, said with the opt-out policy, students who need counseling — specifically those from troubled homes and those who are abused — will suffer the most.
But James Jones said he thinks the opposite will happen.
“I think it will protect counseling,” he said. “I think that it will help students because it protects these vital services.”
Both Mr. Bosher and the education board president pointed out that certain provisions allow a school to counsel an opt-out student if the parent repeatedly does not respond to a school’s request to counsel or if there is suspicion that a child is being abused.
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