School E-mail September 9, 1996

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Subj: Re: BMS
Date: 96-09-09 10:40:06 EDT
From: James.C.Klagge@bev.net (James C. Klagge)
To: moorej@bev.net (James Mendon Moore)

Jim Moore, Supervisor, District A:

I understand you are considering offering a resolution to the Board of Supervisors on Monday, September 9th to retain BMS on the present site. I assume this means renovation and expansion of the current building.

I acknowledge your Board has the right to decide whatever it wants concerning the school building program, since it holds the purse strings. But I hope you understand the depth of concern about this issue from parents in the community. Already your board has tried to get the school system to endorse the present site by last year funding a study of the possibilities on the present site. The local committee responded by offering a compromise of staying on the current site but building a whole new building, and the school board supported this. But it was later discovered that the site was not 25.5 acres, but about 21.8. And of that acreage, over 3 acres are devoted to the football field and not available for Middle School use. Thus the site has about 18 useage acres on it. Thus, given current enrollment at the middle school, it is already below minimum state standards for a school of that size. Upon discovering this the school board again considered the options, this time considering having 2 smaller middle schools, one of which would remain on the current site. This did not have the support of the local FUSS committee and was defeated by the school board in favor of building a new school on a new site. At this point, in light of all these deliberations, it seems to me rather dictatorial to insist that the school remain where it is. My purpose has always been to try to find an option that can gain the most support within the community. Since there seem to be so many options, it has not been easy to do that. (And it seems as though a new one pops up each month. making it even harder to find any consensus.) But insisting on a solution that has already been rejected twice does not seem like the way to do that. I hope there is still time for people to contact you by e-mail (moorej@vt.edu) concerning this.

I will say one thing positive about this motion: I was very depressed by our joint meeting at the Huckleberry Inn about the fact that the supervisors seemed to me to have no plan or timetable for deciding how to move forward with this building program. In fact I felt that your preference for the current BMS site was going to hold everything up. At least you are laying your cards on the table--that BMS should remain on the current site no matter what the school board recommends. If that is how it is to be, then at least we can get on with the rest of it.

I hope you will not mind that I have circulated this letter to you to my e-mail list. I hope it is not too late for them to react directly to you. No doubt some reactions will be positive, but I imagine many will be negative.

Sincerely,
Jim Klagge
School Board, District F

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