Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 9, 1991 TAG: 9104090355
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Medium
After criticizing education professors Glen Earthman and Wayne Worner's $8,000 job, the two boards held a closed meeting to "discuss a legal problem."
Rockbridge board member Clinton Anderson scolded the consultants for not projecting future costs if the school systems did not merge. He also said their calculations were invalid.
The consultants proposed four possible scenarios, all of which would close Brownsburg and Highland Belle middle schools and would save between $206,250 and $865,442 a year.
Three of the scenarios recommend closing Effinger and Mountain View elementary schools.
The consultants' own preferred option would close the four schools; convert Lexington's Lylburn Downing Middle School into an elementary school; and transform Lexington, Natural Bridge and Rockbridge high schools into middle schools.
This option would save $165,000 a year in personnel - cutting staff by one administrator, four teachers and a librarian, and $315,952 in operations.
It also would mean an increase of $282,892 a year in state aid.
The consultants said the most politically feasible option would be to keep open all elementary schools but close Brownsburg, Highland Belle and Lylburn-Downing middle schools. These students would instead attend two new middle schools for grades five through eight at what are now Rockbridge and Lexington high schools. This also would save the least money.
As the boards convened into a closed session, Lexington board Chairman Richard Weatherly declined to say whether the board was planning legal action against the consultants.
"I really don't know what we hope to accomplish," he said. Both City Attorney William Roberts and County Attorney David Natkin were at the meeting and went into executive session with the boards.
Board members were smiling and laughing as they walked down the hallway back to the open meeting place, at Lylburn Downing Middle School's auditorium.
Weatherly read a statement to the few remaining citizens explaining that the meeting was held to discuss specific legal matters "related to the responsiveness of the consultants' report and information needed to complete the study."
Earthman and Worner agreed to provide estimates of future costs if the two systems did not merge and said they would wait for a request in writing from the boards before making any further recommendations.
One parent who attended the meeting and who was disgruntled that the board met in closed session was Washington and Lee law professor Mark Grunewald.
The complaints expressed by School Board members at the meeting "went to the substance of the report," Grunewald said. "They certified that they only discussed legal matters [in closed session], but the general issue of merger is not a legal matter.
"There's a good possibility that . . . they went beyond the spirit if not the letter of the Freedom of Information Act," he said.
"With respect to merger, each time things get controversial, the board shows a tendency to hold secret meetings," said Grunewald, who has children in both city and county schools. "And that does not enhance the confidence of the public in the merger process."
Weatherly said he is absolutely certain the boards had legal grounds for holding the executive session.
by CNB