ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 15, 1996 TAG: 9605150042
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on May 16 in Current
Clarification
Members of several Montgomery County PTA chapters organized the group
that spoke before the county Board of Supervisors Monday. A story in
Wednesday's New River Current incorrectly implied the Montgomery County
Council of PTAs organized the speakers.
Joyce Graham had an inkling that certain Montgomery County officials were interested in her Elliston-area property for more than the rezoning request she and her sister had filed.
A School Board member had asked if the family would be interested in selling the land. And at last month's public hearing, some questions posed by members of the Board of Supervisors struck her as odd.
Monday, when the supervisors voted to postpone the rezoning request until after an executive session, the possibility the county might want her family's land for a new school became obvious to others as well.
That's because discussion of a site for a new Shawsville-area high school was an item up for discussion behind closed doors.
The Montgomery County School Board already has selected and presented to the supervisors - in secret - a separate site for a new Shawsville high school. The School Board is waiting for the supervisors to pursue the properties, said Chairwoman Annette Perkins. The Graham land on Crozier Road would amount to a counterproposal originating from members of the Board of Supervisors.
Graham and her sister, Annette David, are seeking to rezone 34 acres on the south side of Crozier Road from agricultural to residential zoning. The sisters have offered several voluntary limits on their development rights, including half-acre minimum lot sizes; limiting the development to single-family homes with accessory buildings; and stating that no single-wide mobile homes will be allowed.
The Planning Commission recommended approval of the request by a 7-1 vote on April 22.
After coming out of executive session just after 11 p.m., the Board of Supervisors again delayed the rezoning request "until after contact is made [with the landowners] concerning the use of that property."
A new Shawsville-area high school is one of four new schools the county School Board wants to build in the next five years. The others are a new Riner elementary school, and new middle schools at Christiansburg and Blacksburg. Chief on everyone's mind is avoiding a divisive effort at buying a school site, as happened when the county went after land for the new Riner school.
Also Monday, the Board of Supervisors heard from several PTA representatives and parents who urged the board to move forward with the school-building projects.
"We plead with you to do whatever is necessary to provide the funding for all four of these areas," said Sharon Troy, president of the Blacksburg Middle School PTA.
Troy told the board of overcrowded girls' bathrooms, leaking ceilings and children eating lunch just after 10 a.m. to accommodate several lunch shifts."Montgomery County is always pushing for new industry growth - but new industries will not be attracted to an aging and overcrowded school system," Troy said.
Melinda Smith, president of the Shawsville High and Middle School Parent Teacher Student Association and an eighth-grade teacher, said schools have not kept pace with the rapid growth of the Shawsville-Elliston area.
Kim Harris, a Merrimac parent, presented a petition she said was signed by more than 50 people that urges the board to support the School Board's proposal for a new Blacksburg Middle School rather than renovation.
But Harold Dudley, a Blacksburg resident, told the supervisors he appreciated their conservative spending approaches and accused anti-renovation proponents of "scare-mongering.""There's simply a stacked deck here by the School Board and the schools ... That's highly distressing to me," Dudley said.
Regina Smith, who serves on the Montgomery County Council of PTAs, said Tuesday that members did organize forces to appear at the meeting.
Smith said the board is easily influenced by large crowds, such as when Riner residents came out against condemnation proceedings.Smith said recent comments by some supervisors in news reports sparked the large turnout.
"Some of them have essentially said they're not going to" fund the four new school project, Smith said.
Staff Writer Lisa Applegate contributed information for this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 linesby CNB