ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, April 16, 1996                TAG: 9604160079
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-3  EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER 
MEMO: NOTE: SHorter version ran in Metro edition.

WORK ON CAREER CENTER BEGINS SCHOOL TO REACH OUT TO 8TH-, 9TH-GRADERS

It's called the Center for Applied Technology and Career Exploration.

But you can sum it up in two words: Dream realized.

On Monday, a group of about 40 Franklin County leaders broke ground for the center off North Main Street.

Cold drizzle that turned the site into a mud pit did nothing to dampen spirits.

"This is the best thing that's ever happened to the Franklin County schools," said John Smith, director of facilities and transportation.

"This is the first bold move in the region toward true educational reform," said Wayne Angell, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors.

The center was given its lengthy title because those who planned it wanted it to be unique, and they didn't want anyone to confuse it with a magnet school.

Its distinction: Every Franklin County student who goes through the eighth and ninth grades will spend time at the center at some point during those two years.

Superintendent Len Gereau came up with the idea for the center and outlined it to the School Board in 1989.

He said the school system has always had its biggest problems with kids in the middle of their education.

"That's when kids drop out of school," he said. "They start thinking about it in eighth grade, and then they do it when they get to the ninth."

So Gereau decided that a school built to emphasize career choices could "end up wagging both ends" of the school system. He thinks the center's standards will raise those at the elementary and high school levels.

"We've got to get kids to think more about their careers at an earlier age," he said.

The $5.3 million center, to be built by Blair Construction Inc. of Gretna, will house eight modules representing skills and career opportunities of the future - environment/natural resources, arts, manufacturing, engineering/architectural design, media design, legal science, finance, and health and human services/medicine.

To help formulate a curriculum to match the modules, workshops were held involving teachers and business leaders.

The planning of the center and its curriculum has been smooth sailing compared with the hurdles that had to be leaped to get to Monday's ground-breaking.

Franklin County is a rural place where common sense and hard work have always taken priority over megabytes and CD-ROMs, Gereau said.

When Gereau took over the school system 12 years ago, it had a maintenance staff of two, and students were still using manual typewriters instead of electric ones, Smith said.

Would Smith have believed back then that a state-of-the-art facility using modules and hands-on technological training would become a reality in Franklin County?

"No way," he said.

Ditto for Jack Newbill, School Board chairman.

"It was a dream many of us had, but I don't think we ever fully believed this day would get here."

But no one knew 12 years ago how tenacious Gereau would be.

He is so organized that he often takes time before important meetings to write down questions he thinks people will ask him, and then scribbles down answers.

When it came time to sell the public on a 1994 bond referendum to finance the center, Gereau went to work.

He and a team of school personnel divided up and held more than 80 information sessions across the county.

They were already fighting one problem. The referendum came on the heels of a tax increase adopted by the Board of Supervisors.

Newbill supported the referendum, but he was afraid it wouldn't pass.

It did.

"I think it passed because we were honest with the people," said Betty Blair, schools spokeswoman. "We didn't tell them that this wasn't going to cost money."

John Smith thinks the older generation in Franklin County is beginning to realize how the world has changed.

"I used to take gum balls and stuff like that to school," he said. "Now kids bring computer disks."

LENGTH: Medium:   87 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Franklin County school officials 
          started the groundwork Monday for the Center for Applied Technology 
          and Career Exploration. color.