THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 15, 1996 TAG: 9608150345
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: JEFFREY S. HAMPTON, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: CURRITUCK LENGTH: 54 lines
Currituck County students will not be doing the inter-school shuffle after all this year.
Superintendent Ronnie Capps has announced that students will attend the same school throughout the year.
School starts Monday.
``My feeling was, it just wasn't fair to leave the kids, parents and staff in limbo before the school year,'' Capps said from his office Wednesday morning.
Capps and the School Board originally hoped the new $16 million high school in Barco would be finished by now, but the completion deadline has slipped into 1997. The plan is to move high school students into the new building and move junior high students into the old high school, also in Barco. J.P. Knapp Junior High School in Currituck will become a fifth elementary school in the system.
Capps said the additional elementary school will relieve overcrowding at Moyock Elementary School, which has a student count of 665, 200 more than the ideal. Central Elementary School in Barco and Griggs Elementary School in Jarvisburg both have around 400 students. Knotts Island Elementary School is not affected.
``We'll move a lot from Moyock and some from Central to Knapp Elementary,'' Capps said.
Construction deadlines for the new high school lapsed from September this year to Thanksgiving to an uncertain date in early 1997. To accommodate, Capps was forced to delay shifting students from the beginning of the school year to the Christmas break to the beginning of the 1997-98 school year.
``Given the general contractor's problems with scheduling and project coordination relative to the other contractors on site, and the fact we are working with the general contractor's fourth project manager since work began in the summer of 1995, I have no assurance as to the reliability of the current schedule,'' Capps said in a written statement.
Capps will meet with high school seniors to see if they want to be the first class to graduate from the new high school or the last to graduate from the old high school.
``Either would be nice,'' said Latia Banks, 17, a rising senior at Currituck County High School. ``We'll see. I guess I'd like graduating from the new school better, I think.''
Most of her friends haven't made up their minds, she said.
``I don't know. I believe I would rather be in the new school,'' said Charlene Hagen, 17, also a rising senior. ``It would be a change. Something different.''
Currituck County Schools plans to build a new elementary school in Moyock for $5 million to $6 million.
``We're looking at buying land now,'' Capps said. The school should be completed in two years. Also, bids open Aug. 29 for $2 million in renovations to Central Elementary School, to be finished by next fall. by CNB