THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 17, 1995 TAG: 9512150180
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALETA PAYNE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
School district administrators will discuss and explore consolidating some financial services with the city, but School Board members are not going to rush a decision on the issue.
That was the overriding message from a board work session held Tuesday night.
City officials have said they will seek legislative changes to force consolidation if school leaders do not agree to it. While some School Board members have balked outright at combining the services, others have said they are willing to study it.
But at Tuesday's workshop, some members who are open to considering consolidation said they are hesitant to agree to it right now, particularly with an election looming in May, which could change the makeup of the School Board.
The push for consolidation came after the school division ended the 1994-95 fiscal year with a $12.1 million budget shortfall. The city made consolidation a condition of making up the deficit.
Proponents of consolidation say it will save money and increase efficiency. Critics say it will give the city control of the school district.
Also on Tuesday, board members took a look at the proposed Capital Improvement Program. Over the next six years, the school division expects to spend about $300 million on new buildings and improvements to existing schools.
After gaining more than 2,000 students a year at one point, growth has slowed in the division to 582 this year. However, an expected influx of Navy families at Oceana beginning next year will push numbers up again, prompting board members to reconsider some capital improvement priorities.
By next fall, the school system will have added 235 new teaching stations - classrooms, gyms, media centers or resource rooms - in the last two years. With that and other additions, the system's reliance on portable classrooms for instructional use will continue, but should decline over the next eight years if projects are funded, said Ken Lumpkin, the school district's demographer.
Critical to getting all construction projects completed is receiving sufficient funding from the city to house the 2,100 new students the Navy says the district can expect attached to Oceana's expansion over the next four years, Lumpkin said.
Faced with the growth in the Oceana area and concerns about some of the district's oldest buildings, board members suggested that some modernization projects be moved up in the plan - including revamping the 89-year-old W.T. Cooke Elementary School.
Board members also rejected plans to use the Linkhorn Park Elementary School as office space. Linkhorn Park is being vacated by students because it lies in the crash zone for planes flying into Oceana. School officials had planned to move office workers into the site, but School Board members said they did not feel the site should be used by adults if it was considered unsafe for students.
And the board directed staff to analyze and report back on the possibility for adding space trimmed from the plans for two new schools being built in Lake Ridge - a high school scheduled to open in 1999, and a middle school scheduled to open in 2001.
City officials had reduced the size of future schools in a CIP approved two years ago. School officials were told to limit high schools to about 284,000 square feet, which is 23,000 square feet less than Ocean Lakes, the district's newest high school. Middle schools were to be around 230,000 square feet. Elementary schools were reduced from 96,000 to 83,000 square feet.
The board will receive a revised version of the proposed CIP in January. The plan goes to the city in February. by CNB