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

DATE: THURSDAY, November 2, 1995                   TAG: 9511020053
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ZONE CHANGES NOT AS SIMPLE AS THEY SOUND

Cave Spring Junior was built to hold 785 students. This year, it has an enrollment of 935. The school is using eight mobile classrooms to handle the overflow.

Hidden Valley Junior High was built to accommodate 1,020 students. It has an enrollment of 824 - nearly 200 below capacity.

Both schools house children in grades six through nine who live in Southwest County. Their attendance zones adjoin.

So, to ease overcrowding at Cave Spring Junior, consultants and a citizens steering committee have recommended that the county consider adjusting the attendance boundaries.

It sounds simple. Just move the line and shift some students from Cave Spring to Hidden Valley.

But changing the school attendance zones can trigger emotional reactions.

"People have strong loyalties to schools," said Marty Robison, executive assistant for county schools. "That can make it difficult sometimes to adjust boundaries."

Mary Nasca, president of the Cave Spring Junior PTA, said she wouldn't object to a change in the attendance boundary, but she stressed that she was not speaking for the PTA.

"Personally, I wouldn't have any problem with it if you changed the line so more kids could go to Hidden Valley," Nasca said. "You could shift a couple of hundred."

But school officials are cautious because they recall the controversy last year when they proposed to realign the grades at the schools.

Under that plan, one school would have had sixth and seventh grades, and the other would have had eighth and ninth grades.

Most parents assumed that the eighth and ninth grades would have been at Cave Spring Junior, but school officials said no decision had been made.

The realignment proposal would have been the first step toward a middle school grouping in Southwest County.

But parents said the plan would force children to change schools every two years, require longer bus rides for many students, reduce leadership opportunities for students and be only a short-term solution until a new Cave Spring High School was built.

The school administration eventually dropped the proposal.

The recommendation for the shift in attendance zones was included in the recent report on new and renovated school facilities in Southwest County by the Moseley McClintock Group, a Richmond consulting firm, and the steering committee for the study.

Robison said that the proposed change in the boundary for Cave Spring Junior is complicated by the timing for the construction of a proposed new high school.

Under the recommended option, a new high school would be built within three to four years. The existing Cave Spring High School would be converted to a middle school. Cave Spring Junior students would be transferred to the middle school. And Cave Spring Junior would no longer be used as a junior high.

"If you build a new high school and you are going to move the Cave Spring Junior students in a few years, you might want to hold off on making a change in the attendance boundary," Robison said.

"If there are changes in facilities in the near future in Southwest County, do you look at the timetable before you move boundaries?"

If the middle school concept is implemented in Southwest County, as in all other areas in the county, the ninth-graders would be moved to the new high school. The renovated Cave Spring High School would be large enough to accommodate all of the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders who go to Cave Spring Junior.

Some overcrowding problems could be resolved by the middle school concept without changing attendance zones, Robison said.

At the elementary level, the worst overcrowding is at Oak Grove Elementary, which has a capacity of 483 but an enrollment of 557. The school is using portable classrooms to handle the overflow.

Cave Spring Elementary and Penn Forest Elementary also are operating near capacity.

The consultants made no specific recommendations for adjusting attendance zones for elementary schools. But they have proposed the construction of a new 500-student elementary school and an addition to Oak Grove to relieve overcrowding.