ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 23, 1997 TAG: 9701230015
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE STAFF WRITER
When Principal Gary McCoy looks at the educational guidelines for his school, then looks down the halls of Blacksburg Middle School, he can't imagine the two ever converging.
The plan, developed last spring, gives a detailed vision of how a new and larger school would look. Now that the Montgomery County School Board has decided to renovate the 40-year-old building rather than build a new middle school, parents and teachers are trying to imagine their plan inside the present brick structure.
"You can't just put a coat of paint on this and call it renovated," McCoy said.
Conceptual drawings of a renovated Blacksburg Middle will be developed once the Board of Supervisors agrees to pay for it. Tuesday night, the Montgomery County School Board agreed to request $55,000 for drawings and site developments on Blacksburg Middle, the new high school to be built in Shawsville and whatever site is selected for a new middle school in Christiansburg.
Those three buildings, plus a new elementary school in Riner, are part of a building plan developed by school administrators to alleviate overcrowding. Originally, the new schools would have been completed by the turn of the century. With numerous delays, administrators have given up trying to pin down a completion date, or even a total cost for the projects.
Supervisors had asked for the drawings as a way to boost support within the county - and within their own ranks. But visualizing an updated school within the walls of Blacksburg Middle will be a challenge for whose who work there each day, McCoy said.
Sections of the building don't get hot water because of corroded pipes. Computer and electrical cables are run at the tops of walls or even outside the building to accommodate growing technological needs. Two large trash bins sit in an upstairs classroom to catch the dripping water leaking from a perpetual hole in the roof.
When a group of teachers, parents and community members developed the educational plan, they didn't know what the building constraints might be. Some ideas sounded more like a wish list, like a pottery kiln in the art room. Many are essential even now, like classrooms that are clustered for individual teams of students.
That "school-within-a-school" design is a basic element in middle schools, where classes are often built in circular pods that keep each grade in its own area most of the time. Changes like that might be difficult in the present building, which was originally built as a high school.
Still, McCoy wants the Blacksburg community to know there are a set of educational guidelines architects will likely follow when designing the renovations. Copies of those plans are available at the Blacksburg branch of the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library and in the middle school library.
McCoy encouraged people to read the guidelines and give him suggestions. Once some conceptual drawings are completed, McCoy said, the school will hold a forum to hear the public's opinion of the "new" Blacksburg Middle School.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB