ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 23, 1997 TAG: 9702240067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: STEWARTSVILLE
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS is making a lesson out of the School Board's request for bonds to add two elementary schools.
Billy Morck's first-grade reading class at Stewartsville Elementary meets in a small converted girls' shower room. His mother is genuinely thrilled about it. She wasn't sure if the overcrowded school could find a place to hold the class at all.
"We don't ask for a lot, but we're out of showers and closets," Kathy Morck said. "We've used every corner and closet we have, and next year, when 70 new students show up, there will be no more closets for classrooms."
With 855 students packed into a school built for 600, Stewartsville Elementary has more kids over capacity than the entire enrollment of some other county elementary schools. But Stewartsville not only is Bedford County's most crowded school, it's also the center of a decision that could affect the quality of education in the county.
To alleviate overcrowding in the fast-growing southwest and northeast areas of the county, the School Board proposed building two more elementary schools.
However, the Board of Supervisors this month refused a request for $3.5million in bonds to help build schools in the Staunton River and Forest areas. Instead, the supervisors - fed up with the School Board's borrowing money for one project and spending it on another - recommended adding on to Stewartsville and Moneta elementary schools.
School Superintendent John Kent has said it makes better sense to build new schools. At Stewartsville, for example, there's virtually no land to expand, unless you count the playground or parking lot. Adding new classrooms would simply replace mobile classrooms already in place. It wouldn't add significant room for growth, Kent said.
The School Board is still planning to build the new schools and will look at sites this year, in hopes that the Board of Supervisors might reconsider in time for a fall bond sale. If that happened, the new schools could be built by fall 1999. If not, it could be fall 2000 or later, Kent said.
Stewartsville probably will have more than 1,000 students by fall 1999, Principal John Hicks estimates. The school added 70 students last year and 44 more before that. A new 750-pupil elementary school in the Staunton River area would have taken 400 kids from Stewartsville Elementary and 100 from Moneta Elementary, returning those schools to below-capacity enrollments.
A 750-student school in the Forest area would have pulled 500 students from Boonsboro and Forest elementary schools and New London Academy. It also would make room for fifth-graders now housed at Forest Middle to return to elementary schools, and for eighth-graders at Jefferson Forest High to move back to the middle school.
In the meantime, while the supervisors and School Board members try to work out their differences, parents and teachers are struggling to cope.
"We thought it was a done deal. We thought we were going to get our school and the funding would be forthcoming, and then the Board of Supervisors hit us with a whammy," said Tina Secrist, whose two boys, 5-year-old Kevin and 8-year-old Michael, attend Stewartsville Elementary.
"If they build 10 new classrooms, that doesn't help the cafeteria, the library, the playground and the hallways." They're still the same size, Morck said, and "it's too many kids to manage."
Terri Gatrell, a fifth-grade teacher at Stewartsville, has a similar viewpoint.
"I've taught in smaller schools. We were able to get to know a lot more students a lot more personally," she said "When you've got so many students in one school, the kids miss out on personalization. They get lost in the crowd. Kids come past my door, and I may not know who they are or why they're in the hallway, and with young children, you need to know who they are and what they're doing."
The sheer volume also presents a lot of other problems. Lunchtime, for example, runs from 10:30 a.m. until 1:40 p.m. at Stewartsville. The students in each group get only 25 minutes from the time they leave their class until the time they return, and standing in line for food takes up five to 10 minutes.
Leslie Lott, who has three children at Stewartsville, recalled that her 7-year-old son, Samuel, a second-grader, left a straw he needed to puncture his plastic milk bag behind in class one day, and there was no time for him to go back and get it. "He punched it with his fork, held it to his mouth, and drank it, the poor thing," she said.
One hundred kids or more at a time must share 14 swings and two slides at Stewartsville's playground. The PTA wanted to buy a bigger one, but there's no land. And even with 100 kids using the playground each recess, some classes don't get to the playground until the end of the day. "A first-or second-grader waiting to have recess until the end of the day is ridiculous. The energy builds and builds," Morck said. There's nowhere to play on rainy days, because the school blacktop has mobile classrooms on it.
Assemblies also are costlier at Stewartsville. The school has to pay for twice as many performances because its gym can hold only half the student body. Next year, it may take three performances, Hicks said. Stewartsville also has been turned down for field trips because it has too many students. It's a two-day trip to take a single grade of children to Johnson's Orchard.
In the mornings and afternoons, traffic is snarled around Jordantown Road in Stewartsville, as buses and parents' cars pick up and drop off children. It takes nearly 45 minutes for the kids to leave school and load buses in the afternoon.
And there are other problems. The sewer system wasn't built to accommodate the 1,000 users it has a day between students and staff, and, sometimes, "it's a smelly situation" outside, Hicks said. As for the bathrooms, there's about one set to every 8 to 10 classrooms at Stewartsville, and none has warm water.
Stewartsville has 39 regular classrooms, and like other county schools, it has a maze of janitor's closets and storage spaces used for speech, art, music, computer and reading classes.
"The bottom line is we definitely need more space for the kids we've got. An addition would take care of that, but we think it would be to the detriment of the kids. You can't offer a small-school environment with 1,000 kids," Hicks said.
Boonsboro Elementary is in a worse situation for classroom space, because it has no room for mobile trailers. It's closely bordered by a flood plain, U.S. 501 and the Boonsboro Country Club golf course.
Boonsboro gained 20 students since the beginning of the school year; classes have been held anywhere, from the school's atrium to teacher conference rooms. The PTA raised $18,000 for an aquatic studies program, but it had to be canceled because there was nowhere to put it.
A new school is the only solution, Spear said. "We're maxed out."
LENGTH: Long : 131 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. 1. Debbie Newman's class ofby CNBfourth- and fifth-graders at Stewartsville Elementary School works
in a crowded resource room near the library. The student at left is
seated at a desk behind a door. 2. Maureen Goetz's art class meets
backstage in the gymnasium of the school, with gym class going on
just beyond the curtain. 3. Jose Mercado has 30 fifth-graders in his
classroom at Moneta Elementary School. 4. Lunches begin at 10:30 to
accommodate all the students at Stewartsville Elementary. 5.
Stewartsville has added trailers to make room for its 255 students
over capacity. There is no room for expansion on the grounds. color.
Graphic: Chart by staff: School enrollment. color. KEYWORDS: MGR