ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 9, 1996 TAG: 9603110030
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: THE CITZENS' AGENDA
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
AS THE APRIL 2 BOND referendum nears, some voters have suggested that proposed amenities at the new Cave Spring High School are too lavish.
The new Cave Spring High School would have a football stadium and a gymnasium that would seat about 2,000 spectators, but there would be no swimming pool.
Cave Spring is the only Roanoke County school with a swim team. When plans for the new school were being discussed last fall, some parents said it needed a pool so the team wouldn't have to travel for practices.
But a pool was not included in an effort to hold down the facility's $33.6 million cost.
As the April 2 bond referendum nears, some voters have questioned the cost, and suggested the school would be too lavish.
Shannon Abell, who lives in North Roanoke County and graduated from Northside High School, said voters need to know what will be included in the school.
"What I want to know is, besides classrooms, are we including a luxurious gymnasium? What about a football stadium, parking, et cetera?" Abell asked. "If it was pure classrooms, that's one issue, but look at Salem High School: They got a football stadium that rivals many junior colleges and some colleges."
The budget for the new school includes $1.5 million for a stadium and field house. Some details of the stadium have not been resolved, but it would be much smaller and have fewer features than Salem's stadium, said Marty Robison, executive assistant for county schools.
Cave Spring High does not have its own stadium. It shares a 40-year-old facility with Cave Spring Junior High School, Hidden Valley Junior High, a semi-professional soccer team and the county's Department of Parks and Recreation.
Before plans for the new high school were developed, school officials proposed a $1 million renovation of the Cave Spring Junior High stadium that is used by the high school.
But the renovation has been put on hold because no major refurbishing will be done if a stadium is built at the new high school, Robison said.
The Cave Spring gym would be smaller than a 2,250-seat gym being built for Northside, a smaller school.
Cave Spring would have 1,660 students when ninth-graders are moved there. The school is projected to have 1,900 students within 10 years.
The bond issue also includes $2.8 million to complete the construction of a new Northside gym.
"I know about Northside, and my question is: I'm for education, but do we need to increase gymnasiums to seat more people?" Abell said.
"I mean there gets to be a point that we're developing schools to become a proving ground for the NBA and the NFL, and while I'm all for education, I say spend more money on computers. Maybe we don't need to spend as much in the locker room or on weight equipment."
But Sylvia Tricarico, a former teacher in New York and Iowa who is now a substitute teacher in Roanoke County, defends the plan for the new school's gym.
"The swimming pool was knocked out, too much money. I hear fancy gym, but what is a fancy gym?" asked Tricarico, who has a child at Cave Spring High. "You need a place for the kids to have physical education."
The $33.6 million cost for the new Cave Spring High includes $26.5 million for the building and site work; $1.5 million for the stadium; and $5.6 million for equipment, furnishings, technology, testing, and architectural and engineering fees.
The estimated construction costs for the building and site work are comparable to those for new high schools built in Virginia in the past year, according to the state Department of Education.
The projections were made by Moseley McClintock Group, a Richmond-based architectural and engineering firm that did the feasibility study for the new school. It also has the design and engineering contract.
The price of the 268,000-square-foot school would be $99 per square foot, slightly below the cost of two high schools elsewhere in Virginia for which construction contracts were awarded last year.
Loudoun County approved a contract for Potomac Falls High at a cost of $102.53 per square foot. The school, which will have 1,548 students in a 227,835-square-foot building, cost $23.4 million. That does not include equipment, furniture, technology and fees.
Chesapeake awarded a contract for Hickory High at a price of $99.84 per square foot. The 267,500-square-foot school, which will have 2,297 students, cost $26.7 million - excluding equipment other costs.
The Chesapeake building is about the same size as Cave Spring and cost almost the same. But the Chesapeake school will have about 400 more students than the Roanoke County school.
Mark McConnel, an architect with Motley and Associates, said the building and site estimates for Cave Spring seem to be in line with other recent school projects around the state. The Northside classroom addition, auditorium and gym project will cost about $95 per square foot, he said. Motley and Associates are architects for Northside.
Newport News awarded contracts for two new high schools in late 1994 at a cost of $78.07 and $79.62 per square foot. But school construction costs rose by more than 20 percent between 1994 and 1995, according to construction industry publications.
The technology costs for the new Cave Spring school are comparable to amounts being spent on other new schools. In Roanoke, technology costs for Jackson Middle School will be about 5 percent to 7 percent of building and site expenses, said Richard Kelley, assistant superintendent for operations. At the new Cave Spring school, technology costs are projected at about 4.5 percent.
Kathy Batchler, a Southwest County mother who has two sons at Cave Spring Junior High, said the new high school isn't extravagant.
"I don't think that what they are building is any more state-of-the-art than what would be standard, and I guess people need to understand that," said Batchler, a former special education teacher in Cincinnati.
"What they're building is a real fine school; it's technologically improved over what they've got and of course we have to be; we are in desperate need of that," she said.
Jan Danahy, who has a child who will go to Cave Spring next year, said the county needs to upgrade its technology, particularly in high schools.
"This is something that is addressed in this [bond] issue, and if we think that we cannot look at this with some hard, cold looks, we're all mistaken," Danahy said.
"Everything we do is on computers of some kind or another. We need to not only look at the facilities, but look at the technology that goes into these facilities."
Got a question about the upcoming Roanoke County school bond referendum? Let us know so we can follow up. Write: Joel Turner, The Roanoke Times, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke 24010.
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