ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 24, 1996 TAG: 9604240026
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
David Moore can say "I told you so."
The Montgomery County School Board member warned his colleagues last week their 5-4 vote to raze Blacksburg Middle School and build a new school adjacent to it would not wash with the Board of Supervisors.
Monday, three supervisors made his prediction come true.
Supervisors Joe Gorman, Nick Rush and Ira Long told School Board members Monday they wouldn't support the plan.
"I will not vote for a nickel, one nickel, bond referendum or otherwise, for tearing that school down," Long said. He called the building one of the county's best.
The School Board controls the county's schools, but the Board of Supervisors controls the taxes and other funding sources that would pay for improvements.
Had the supervisors been voting Monday, the School Board's recommendation would have failed. At a school site selection committee meeting Tuesday, Supervisor Jim Moore said he too would have voted against it.
"To put it bluntly, if it had come to a vote last night, we would have voted to expand and renovate" the current school, Moore said. That was an option the School Board rejected last week.
The committee, organized to improve communications between the supervisors and the School Board, consists of Supervisors Moore and Henry Jablonski, and School Board members Mary Beth Dunkenberger and Roy Vickers.
Though he said he probably would have voted against building a new school, Moore said he wanted to hear the rationale behind the School Board's decision. School Board Chairwoman Annette Perkins hopes to better explain her board's vote and provide a detailed presentation to the supervisors within the month.
Dunkenberger said the present school, no matter how much it was renovated, could not be used under the middle-school concept. Under that theory of teaching, each grade in the school functions separately, using larger rooms to team-teach and hold assemblies.
"You'd be spending almost the same amount of money if you renovated, but not meet the educational goals," she said.
But demolishing the building is a hard concept for some supervisors to swallow.
"The idea of destroying a perfectly good building is absolutely ridiculous," Gorman said. He said the county could take a lesson from Virginia Tech, which renovates buildings, not rebuilds.
Gorman said the Board of Supervisors didn't yet have enough information to decide the Blacksburg Middle School issue, and asked for an evaluation by the county's engineer.
Rush also opposed tearing down the current middle school.
"I was in that building no more than three weeks ago. I was in total shock [people] want to tear it down," he said.
Rush asked if the last renovation to the school has been paid for yet. Perkins and school Superintendent Herman Bartlett confirmed those renovations were financed with a 1981 bond referendum that will be paid off in 2001.
The county needs to decide by midsummer whether to put a three-school bond referendum on the November ballot. Besides Blacksburg Middle School, plans are under way for a new Christiansburg Middle School and a new Shawsville High School.
Staff Writer Lisa Applegate contributed information for this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB