THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 22, 1996 TAG: 9610220244
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 45 lines
See the School Board. See the consultants.
Talk, consultants, talk.
See the School Board members' eyes get really big.
They had a similar reaction earlier this month when a Blue Ribbon Committee studying school needs recommended they drastically speed up their building plans and renovate other crowded, outdated facilities. Monday night at Lakeland High School, consultants and school administrators put some numbers on those recommendations: an expanded $143.6 million 10-year building plan, with more than $75 million of it scheduled for the next two years.
A somber board listened as John B. Maddux Jr., an architect with Cederquist Rodriguez Ripley Maddux in Chesapeake, showed how a detailed national evaluation system measuring everything from fire alarms to which way the classroom doors swing rated six of their schools unsatisfactory. The schools are Booker T. Washington, Driver and Florence Bowser elementaries and John F. Kennedy, John Yeates and Forest Glen middle schools.
Needed expansions and renovations would cost from $6.8 million to $8 million apiece - not much less than the cost of new schools, but the fixed-up schools would be expected to last another 30 or 40 years.
``This does not mean that the school system hasn't been doing what it should,'' Maddux said. ``Certain things just get old and need to be replaced.''
Standards and needs change, too. Wheelchair access and security doors, electrical outlets and phone lines for computers, space for special-education and guidance counselors generally weren't needed when many of these schools were built in the 1950s.
Add a 7 percent jump in the student population this fall - up 677 children to 10,806 - and you have the classic government problem of trying to stuff 10 pounds of public needs into a 5-pound bag of public resources. It happened in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake in the past decade, and now it's Suffolk's turn.
``We are already two schools behind, when you consider the number of portables we have,'' said Superintendent Joyce H. Trump.
``If we add another 600 students, that's a new school.''
KEYWORDS: SUFFOLK SCHOOLS by CNB