Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 8, 1994 TAG: 9410100034
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
No longer can students take their bags to classes or the cafeteria. Neither can they carry them in the halls.
So what's going on?
Students must leave their bags in lockers during the school day partly because the school is so crowded.
Students are crunched together in the halls when they change classes, and the bags make the crowding worse, said Steve Boyer, principal.
Some students have been carrying them to classes and laying them down beside their desks or in the aisles.
Students have tripped over the bags, and the teachers couldn't move around classrooms freely, Boyer said.
Some students have swung their bags in the halls, striking others. They have brought headphones, tape recorders and other things in their bags, but no weapons, Boyer said.
The students can carry the bags on buses. But when they arrive at school in the morning, they must put their bags in their lockers.
Boyer said the students have adjusted well to the new policy, but some say they don't like it.
"It causes us to be late to classes because we have to go back to our lockers between every class," said one student. "It's hard to carry around so many books."
Another student said she believes the policy puts a hardship on the students. "The bags don't cause that much trouble." she said.
Cave Spring Junior has a capacity of 825 students, but it has 913 this year. One of the biggest crunches occurs in the cafeteria, which seats only 250. The school must have four lunch periods, begining at 10:20 and ending at 1:20, to accommodate all the students, Boyer said.
Because of overcrowding, he said, the school must have several physical education classes at a time in the gymnasium. Students can go outside for physical education when the weather is good, but that will change this fall and winter.
Cave Spring has modular classrooms to help ease the space crunch. By using them, Boyer said, the school manages to avoid large classes.
The overcrowding at Cave Spring Junior is one of the reasons the county has proposed realigning the grades at Cave Spring and Hidden Valley junior high schools.
School administrators said Cave Spring is operating at 110 percent of capacity and Hidden Valley is using 87 percent of its capacity.
Many parents of students at both schools oppose the proposal for one school to have sixth- and seventh-graders and the other to have eighth- and ninth-graders. Both schools now have grades six through nine.
They said the proposal would reduce the student population at Cave Spring by only 50 students. "You are doing all of this for just 50 children. You could redistrict and move that many students," one mother said.
Some parents have wondered whether the Cave Spring school is unsafe as crowded as it is.
But Assistant School Superintendent James Gallion said the school meets all fire and safety codes. "That is our top priority, the safety of the children," Gallion said. "The building is safe."
sh: :wq!: not found STORY Bookbags 10. TOPIC scrunched st KEYWORDK AUTHOR:JOELT10/08/94 1
text
begin
Input file was 0032 Output file was /asst/dti/1010/pass2/0032
by CNB