DATE: Wednesday, September 10, 1997         TAG: 9709100533

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   82 lines

SCHOOL BOARD PONDERS SOUTH NORFOLK SPACE

It looked like business as usual for the children at Rena B. Wright Primary School during Tuesday morning recess. Some renegades were going up the slide, not down. The swing sets were filled.

But those children on a playground encroached upon by portable classrooms might end up in the middle of a storm. The School Board must decide whether it's enough to ease school crowding in South Norfolk, or if a more radical revamping of the area's primary and intermediate schools - into elementary schools where students would remain in one building for kindergarten through fifth grade - is called for.

At the center of the debate is the old Truitt Junior High School building, which is serving as the temporary home of Norfolk Highlands Primary while that school is being renovated, but which will be available to South Norfolk students beginning in September 1998.

How it would best serve students has been studied by administrators and a community advisory board since November 1996, with a series of options being presented to the board Monday.

The option recommended by the administration and committee was one that would change Rena B. Wright Primary to a K-2 school instead of K-3. Truitt, which is near Wright, would serve as an intermediate school for grades three through five for Rena B. Wright students who had formerly gone to G. W. Carver Intermediate, and some students who now attend Thurgood Marshall Elementary.

The board was presented with 13 options, but for some members that wasn't enough - not if they didn't include more viable options for revamping the South Norfolk schools into elementary schools.

That's how Joy Neal, who grew up in South Norfolk, remembers it.

``You had an elementary, a junior high and a high school. You didn't have all these in-between groups,'' said Neal, who has three children, two who graduated from Oscar Smith High School and one who is a student at Oscar Smith Middle School.

And that's the way School Board member Jeffrey A. Rowland thinks it should be again.

``We have a golden opportunity right now. I hate to see it go by the wayside, because it won't come again for a long, long time. The last time we restructured the schools (in South Norfolk) was 25-30 years ago,'' said Rowland, who also grew up in South Norfolk and whose children go to school there.

On Monday night, Rowland asked school administrators to look at more ways that the district might use the space available at Truitt to make as many schools as possible serve students in kindergarten through fifth grade. The School Board rejected the request with a 4-4 vote, but Rowland said he would try again at the board's Sept. 29 meeting when it holds a public hearing and a work session on the options.

Rowland and board members James J. Wheaton, Patricia P. Willis, and Thomas L. Mercer Sr. speculated that a change to K-5 might increase parental involvement in an area of the city where standardized test scores are the lowest.

``When you double the number of schools that parents interact with, you decrease their potential to become involved in any of them,'' Wheaton said Monday.

But whatever the merits of a K-5 program, it's too much to take on at this time, said board Chairwoman Barbara B. Head. The schools in Deep Creek have been realigned to a K-5 configuration already, but the cost of doing more now would be prohibitive. And, in South Norfolk, there was the additional concern that K-5 schools would be racially imbalanced because they would shrink attendance zones.

Head said that what Rowland was suggesting went beyond what the committee and the school administration were charged to do regarding Truitt. She said she was concerned about delaying the process too much.

``You like to get word out to the community in advance, not just the summer before, particularly if you're changing attendance zones,'' she said.

But Rowland said he was looking ahead to 2004, when the schools in South Norfolk might be faced with losing their accreditation if something isn't done to improve their standardized test scores. If that happened, it would be the ``death of the community'' as families move out in order to have their children attend accredited schools, he said. ILLUSTRATION: WHAT'S NEXT

The School Board will hold a public hearing and a work session on

the future of the Truitt building at its Sept. 29 meeting.

A second public hearing will be Oct. 13.

A decision is scheduled for Oct. 27. KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE SCHOOLS CHESAPEAKE SCHOOL BOARD

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