DATE: Tuesday, September 16, 1997           TAG: 9709160017

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   51 lines

OCEANA NAVAL AIR STATION GROWTH ISN'T FREEVIRGINIA BEACH MUST FACTOR CRASH ZONE NEWS INTO A LARGER SCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN.

The notion that there's no gain without pain is given currency by last Thursday's news regarding Oceana Naval Air Station. The likelihood that 180 additional jets and 5,600 jobs will be coming to Virginia Beach if the Navy decides to make Oceana the principal East Coast air base is welcome news. But costs will inevitably accompany the growth.

City services will have to be augmented to meet the needs of the newcomers. Fortunately, the city has already approved $50 million worth of improvements to Oceana Boulevard and other roads serving the base. This road construction is long overdue. Traffic regularly bogs down in the area.

A draft environmental report indicates a need to rethink school building and renovation plans. It turns out that Linkhorn Elementary, previously identified as in the Oceana crash zone, is not really at risk. And only Seatack Elementary's playground is now designated. But two schools previously thought out of harm's way - Brookwood and Plaza Elementary - are now identified as within the zone.

Noise zones have been expanded and may force schools to take architectural measures to minimize the disruption caused by jet noise.

Virginia Beach will now have to decide how to respond. One attractive alterative is to move Cooke students into Linkhorn while Cooke undergoes much-needed renovation and then use Linkhorn for the gifted-and-talented program now in cramped quarters at Kemps Landing. Seatack's future remains up in the air. And what to do about the two newly designated schools becomes a top priority.

At first blush, the changing information coming from the Navy makes it looks as if the Beach has undertaken school building projects unnecessarily. Clearly, if the new crash zone footprint had been available earlier, construction priorities might have been different. And the new information will also clearly require a rethinking of current plans.

But the Oceana developments are just one factor in a much larger school infrastructure equation. Dozens of schools are nearing the end of their useful lives or stand in need of major renovation.

In fact, it is actually fortuitous that the Oceana news arrives in time to make it a part of a comprehensive school building plan that should be presented to voters in 1998. And thanks to Oceana's growth, there won't just be more demand for improved schools by then. There will also be more taxpayers who will benefit from those improvements and thus have reason to vote in favor of the referendum to fund them.

The challenge to the schools and to the city is to devise a plan that will win the needed votes by providing the kind of education that will persuade even more people and employers to locate within the borders of Virginia Beach.

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