BOARD ASKED TO RECONSIDER BUSES THROUGH HETHWOOD

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 4, 1993                   TAG: 9302040143
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-3   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
BOARD ASKED TO RECONSIDER BUSES THROUGH HETHWOOD
Blacksburg Vice Mayor Michael Chandler has asked the Montgomery County School Board to reconsider a proposal to bring buses to a new Blacksburg elementary school through the Hethwood community.
The School Board plans to build a bus entrance to the school from Cambridge Road in the Haymarket Square section of Hethwood. School Superintendent Harold Dodge says that route is safer than bringing buses directly in from Prices Fork Road where they would have to turn across two lanes of traffic.
The new school and recreational park will be built on a 28-acre site adjacent to Prices Fork Road and the Food Lion shopping center.
Plans call for car traffic to enter the school from Prices Fork Road, but the School Board wants bus traffic kept separate from the cars for safety reasons.
In a memo to the School Board, Chandler noted that bringing buses into the school through Hethwood will require four turns on congested residential streets while building the bus entrance on Prices Fork Road would require only one turn.
"The buses will be competing with cars parked along Cambridge as well as morning `rush hour' commuters and no doubt several `score' of children walking or riding bikes to the news school," Chandler wrote.
Chandler said he believed there are several options to the proposed bus route and that he hoped the board would work with the Blacksburg Town Council to resolve the issue.
"I believe the Cambridge Road proposal - if implemented - will compromise the safety and integrity of Haymarket Square in particular and the Strouble Mill section of Hethwood in general," he wrote.
Board Member Don Lacy of Blacksburg distributed the memo to other board members Tuesday night, but the board did not discuss it.
The county plans to swap a right-of-way to Prices Fork Road through the school site to Michael S. Kipps for the land needed for the bus entrance. The Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing on the land swap on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. in the county courthouse in Christiansburg.
A group of Hethwood residents, who also say they are concerned about safety, has worked to organize opposition to the proposed bus entrance. Susan Bright, one of the leaders of that effort, said 410 people signed a petition in opposition that was given to Dodge on Jan. 26.
Eighty percent of the residents of the Haymarket Square town houses that are immediately adjacent to the school site were contacted about signing the petition and 94 percent of them signed, Bright said.
The residents now plan to mount a letter-writing campaign to individual county officials and to attend the public hearing, Bright said.
Residents of Hethwood also objected to plans to cut a 100-year-old stand of trees for construction of the school. They argue that the trees could be used as an outdoor laboratory for the school's science classes.
Dave Smith, one of the opponents and dean at Virginia Tech's forestry school, has written county officials offering to meet with them and discuss the potential of the trees for an outdoor laboratory and to help the county find volunteers to develop it.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB