Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 16, 1994 TAG: 9411170081
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Wouldn't it be just grand," Bowers rhetorically asked in a letter last week to the other members of City Council, if city and county officials could begin planning for a single facility to replace aging Patrick Henry High School in Southwest Roanoke and aging Cave Spring High School in Southwest Roanoke County?
No, it wouldn't be grand. It would be awful.
The result would be a mega-school of 4,000 students, biggest in Virginia. For practical reasons such as curriculum, costs and manageability, schools must be of a certain size, especially in urban areas like the Roanoke Valley. But the preponderance of educational experience and research suggests strongly that beyond a certain point - and a 4,000-student high school is far beyond that point - bigger is worse, not better. In short, Bowers' idea is a poor one for educational reasons.
The idea emerged stillborn, however, not because of educational considerations but for other, less noble reasons. It is a nonstarter chiefly because of lingering distrust between city and county, a distrust reinforced by (1) Virginia's odd independent-city system of local government, (2) city arrogance and (3) too often, the whiff of suburban racism. Despite improvements in recent years in some local-government activities, the distrust remains.
Hence, the larger point, which Bowers is right to raise: If residents of the Roanoke Valley are to exert control over their future, they must plan for it. To plan for it effectively, they have to understand that the valley is at bottom a single community, and that artificial political boundaries separating the localities mean little in the face of underlying economic forces and social dynamics.
Bowers' letter was occasioned in part by the 40th anniversary this fall of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (N.C.) Planning Commission in North Carolina. In the letter, he sought Roanoke City Council encouragement for the city's Planning Commission and School Board to meet with their Roanoke County counterparts.
This contrast alone - while the official planning commission for the Charlotte metro area is entering its fifth decade as a regional body, the thought of the Roanoke city and county planning commissions and school boards holding a meeting with each other is deemed an innovation - supplies ample evidence of Roanoke Valley lag.
The valley neither can nor should become "another Charlotte." But the valley can and should - in concert - plan toward meeting the evolving, regional goals it sets for itself.
Similarly, there are good educational reasons for rejecting the vision of a 4,000-student high school. But the Roanoke Valley can ill afford to dismiss good ideas for its schools simply because they'd require a level of city-county cooperation not yet in place.
by CNB