ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603060006
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-17 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE STAFF WRITER
Ray Van Dyke remembers life in an overcrowded school.
Before he became principal at the new Kipps Elementary, he oversaw the 600 pupils at nearby Gilbert Linkous.
"We had four trailers. We were using closets for instructional space. Gilbert Linkous was, among all three [elementary] schools open then, the most crowded."
Kipps - and the inevitable attendance redistricting that came with it - solved much of the overcrowding in Blacksburg when it opened in 1994.
With the current 465 students at Kipps, Van Dyke said, "We're comfortable, but bordering on getting uncomfortable."
Kipps may grow even more crowded if the proposed 538-acre development on Price Mountain becomes a reality. Unless attendance lines are altered, children from Merrimac and Oilwell roads will go to Kipps.
"It's obviously going to have a pretty huge impact on the school," Van Dyke said.
Larry Schoff, maintenance and transportation director for the school system, said the intensity of the squeeze depends on the pace of development.
Developer William H. Price told the Montgomery County Planning Commission it would take two or three decades to develop the land. That, Schoff says, would be a blessing.
He said rapidly growing subdivisions and town-house developments leave the schools scrambling to find space for a burst of additional children.
In general, Schoff estimates each new household will produce one school-age child. In any given subdivision, roughly 60 percent of those children would attend primary schools.
Price said he planned to develop 20 to 30 new lots each year once the project is in full swing. That averages out to be 15 pupils (or 60 percent of an average of 25 students) at Kipps each year.
That's about what Laura Wedin, Kipps PTA president, expected.
"I knew when they built this school it would be a call for people to come," she said.
Her main concern is the pupil-teacher ratio at Kipps - something that's stayed pleasantly low since the school opened. Goals 2006, the long-range educational plan developed by parents and teachers, calls for a ratio of 20 pupils to each teacher within the next decade.
Wedin said those low ratios help teachers give individual attention to children and catch problems before they get out of hand.
But low ratios become an increasingly difficult goal to reach for Montgomery County. Estimates show 600 new students will enter the school system in the next five years. The School Board is struggling to persuade the Board of Supervisors to help fund four new schools to help combat overcrowding.
For that reason, any new development concerns parents, Wedin said.
"It's something we're watching because it's down the road," she said. "In another couple of years, all our schools will be filled."
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB