DATE: Wednesday, March 5, 1997              TAG: 9703050427

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   60 lines

SCHOOL BOARD WILL TELL SUFFOLK ITS CONCERNS ABOUT BUILDING PLAN CITY COUNCIL HAS PROPOSED A PANEL TO OVERSEE PROJECTS - INCLUDING SCHOOLS.

City Council, stand by your phones, your fax machines, your computers' e-mail programs. The School Board would like a word with you.

At a hurriedly called meeting Tuesday night, the board agreed to express its ``concerns'' to council members about a proposal on tonight's council meeting agenda that would wrest management of school-construction projects away from school officials.

The proposal is to form a four-person, $298,000-a-year centralized Capital Program Management Department to manage all of the city's public-construction projects - including schools.

Board members wonder whether a non-education agency can do what's best for schoolchildren, whether the central city plan would be better financially than hiring private firms to manage projects, and whether the new department would have the size and expertise to handle all the city's projects.

``We do have some concerns,'' School Board Chairman Mark A. Croston said after board members emerged from a 68-minute closed session with their lawyer in the Nansemond River High School library.

``And we intend to try and communicate those to the council expeditiously.''

That means before tonight's council meeting. Croston said he couldn't reach any of several council members he tried to call Tuesday.

While the idea of a central city construction office has been broached in informal talks between school and city leaders, ``the presentation and its timing were quite a surprise,'' Croston said after the meeting.

He and other school officials learned about the proposal late Friday from a newspaper reporter.

The proposal comes when the city is struggling with needs caused by sudden, recent growth that has overstuffed schools and caused the School Board to request $128 million in new buildings and renovations in the next six years.

In recent joint work sessions, individual council members have criticized school officials' planning; educators remind them that the council approves the new housing that brings the new students to Suffolk.

Croston said the board is still investigating the legality of another city agency handling school construction, although Portsmouth has a similar system.

The state Department of Education knows of no other locality where the school board doesn't oversee school construction, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

State law lists among a school board's powers and duties: ``Care for, manage and control the property of the school division and provide for the erecting, furnishing, equipping and noninstructional operating of necessary school buildings and appurtenances and the maintenance thereof by purchase, lease, or other contracts.''

The law also states that each school board ``shall manage and control the funds made available to the school board for public schools. . . .''

School divisions get their money from their city, town or county - raised through property taxes - and from state and federal funding.

A representative from the city manager's office didn't return phone calls Tuesday asking about the genesis of the proposal.

``I think we have the added pressure of knowing that there's tremendous growth in Suffolk,'' Croston said.

``When we're talking about the need for schools, we're talking about real needs, because we work with them every day.''

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