ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603220058
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
ROANOKE COUNTY voters will decide April 2 if the county will continue to be committed to excellence in education.
They will not be deciding if the site chosen for a new Cave Spring High School is ideal, if Glenvar Middle School students should have their own unshared cafeteria, or if Northside High School should have a gym that can seat 4,000 fans.
They will be deciding if the fast-growing Cave Spring area of Southwest County will get a new high school sooner rather than later. And if they say "later," by defeating the bond issue to build it, they will be deciding to pay much more for a project that is needed in any event, while laying waste to a sense of mutual obligation that has earned the county a reputation for quality schools - in every quarter.
This isn't a case of "It would be nice if we had . . . ." Not only is Cave Spring Junior High School bursting at the seams, its ninth-graders deserve to have the same opportunities associated with attending a high school that every other county ninth-grader has in every other area of the county.
Even without the ninth-grade class in attendance, the high school itself is at capacity - beyond capacity when the need for special-education classrooms and science and technology labs are taken into consideration, as they have been in expansions built or planned in every other area of the county. And, while school population is down slightly in other parts of the county, Southwest County population is heading nowhere but up. Its facility and space needs will only grow more acute.
A delay in meeting them would be expensive. Stopgap fixes to take care of the most pressing needs at the senior and junior high schools would cost millions, and taxpayers still would have to pay for a new high school eventually, at inflated construction costs.
Never mind stated worries about the site. If the site weren't a problem, the bond issue's most vocal critics would still oppose it. The bulk of opposition seems to fall into two camps: those worried about their tax bills and those worried that, because Cave Spring is relatively affluent, its schools get more than their fair share of tax dollars.
But the county has promised not to raise real-estate tax rates this year. The last time the county changed the rate, in fact, it was lowered by 2 cents per $100 assessed value. Assessments have risen, of course, pushing up bills. But the county gives the maximum tax relief possible to elderly and handicapped residents to blunt the impact of rising property values on people of modest means. And rejecting the bond issue would do nothing to reduce the prospect of future tax increases.
Roanoke County can afford a top-quality school system. Does its school district divide its spending equitably among various parts of the county? It seems to. Some $33 million of this $37 million bond issue is slated for a high school serving just one part of the county. But that is only one chunk of $90 million worth of improvements planned over five years for county schools. Other projects have been smaller in scale, but have been designed for many fewer students than the 1,900 expected to attend Cave Spring High School by the year 2004.
If the project is rejected, how could other improvements go forward, while one such pressing need is ignored? No part of the county should be treated like a stepchild, whether it is a poor stepchild or a rich stepchild.
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