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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 24, 1995                   TAG: 9505240077
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

5TH-GRADERS WANT FUTURE, NOT PAST

No one raised the issue of historic preservation.

The fifth-graders at Garden City Elementary School were more interested in computers than the controversy over the plan to raze part of the Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Southeast Roanoke.

The children wanted to know how many classrooms and computers Jackson will have when it reopens in September 1996.

They asked if the school will have a football team, and if there will be a new library.

It was an easy sell for Richard Kelley, assistant school superintendent for operations.

There were no hostile questions such as those Monday night when school officials held a neighborhood meeting to explain the project.

Some residents in the Southeast neighborhood are fighting the plan to raze part of the building that was built in the 1920s.

Not the future students.

The fifth-graders are excited about the $5.5 million project to modernize Jackson. They will attend Jackson as seventh-graders after they go to Breckinridge Middle School next year.

"I think the new school is going to be kind of fun," Tony Sink, 10, said after he asked Kelley several questions about it.

"It's going to be cool," said Thomas Board, another fifth-grader.

The pupils joined several parents at the second in a series of briefings on the project by school officials

Kelley stressed the technology theme. Rebuilding to provide laboratories is cited as the chief reason for tearing down part of the school.

If the pupils want to prepare a report on whales when they arrive at Jackson, Kelley said, they won't have to go to the library. He said they'll be able to use computers to connect to the Internet and get the information they need.

No, Jackson won't get a football team, Kelley said, but it will have seven technology classrooms and 23 regular classrooms when it reopens.

And he assured the pupils that the entire building will be air-conditioned.

If there were any doubters after Kelley's presentation, Charles Kennedy, Jackson's principal, assured them they would like the school.

"It's going to be new and everybody will welcome you," he said.