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Subj: School Board Newsletter
Date: 97-12-16 23:30:13 EST
From: James.C.Klagge@bev.net (James C. Klagge)
To: "school issues list"@vt.edu
Dear Friends,
Here are some up-dates on two issues mentioned in my last letter:
1) Charter Schools.
Some people wanted to know more about this legislation. The legistature is developing a web-based method for tracking all legislation, which is not yet up-and-running for the 1998 session. You will be able to access it at: . In the meantime you can read a page-long summary of the bill from last year, which is essentially what this year's bill will start out looking like, at the following site: . This bill failed to be reported out of committee by a tie vote of 11 to 11.
Legislation for the new session will start being listed in the second week of January. If you wish to contact your Delegate by e-mail concerning this or other legislation you can do so as follows:
Jim Shuler: deljshuler@aol.com
Morgan Griffith: lawleg@aol.com
I haven't yet gotten an e-mail address for our senator, Madison Marye, but
if I do I will pass it on to you as well.
2) Blacksburg-area Building plans:
A committee of about 30 people met last week to discuss the various possibilities for how best to proceed. They strongly recommending having 2 middle schools of a maximum size of about 800 in the Blacksburg area. A new one, to be built asap, and the current one renovated. They also favored buying enough land now to build a HS as well, at some point after the MS situation is taken care of. Then they thought the current HS might be useable, after renovation, as an elementary school (which will be needed in the Blacksburg area) and perhaps as a facility for other ancillary programs such as head start, at-risk pre-school, etc.
This report will come before the school board this evening, at which point we will probably make a recommendation to pass on to the supervisors. One of the advantages of having this recommendation come from a 30-person committee is that it gives a good starting point for encouraging grass-roots support for a recommendation before the supervisors. The supervisors are not necessarily responsive to the recommendations of the school board, but if they see they are expressive of a widely supported community concern, that can make a difference. The SB's recommendation a year and a half ago to tear down the current MS and build a new one on the back of the property died before the supervisors at least partly because there was no real expression of community support for that. And consequently we were, in my opinion, forced into accepting renovation (or nothing at all). So I hope that you will let your views on this current proposal be known.
Sincerely,
Jim Klagge
School Board Member
District F.
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