School Board Newsletter #43, August 8, 1998

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Subj: School Board Newsletter #43
Date: 98-08-08 13:27:57 EDT
From: jklagge@bev.net (Jim Klagge)
To: jklagge@bev.net

Dear Friends,

Hope you are having a relaxing and recreating summer. Though we cancelled our two July school board meetings, we have already started back to work with our first meeting in August. I thought this would be a good time to update you on what's been happening.

(I got a new computer this summer, which is PC rather than Mac, and I am not sure all the e-mail works the same. If you experience any difficulty receiving or formatting this letter please let me know.)

1) School Building Program. The last day of June we had the ground-breaking ceremony for the new HS in the Elliston/Shawsville area. I had many profound and humorous things to say on that occasion, but it was raining so hard that I did not take the time to say them. Thursday, August 20, at 6pm, will be the opening ceremony for the new Auburn Elementary School. All are welcome to that.

So now I know many of you are wondering what is happening with the middle school projects in Blacksburg and Christiansburg: The Christiansburg project is and has been bogged down with difficulty finding land. We are continuing that search. The Blacksburg project, as many of you know, has been bogged down by controversy and evolution of the appropriate VISION for the project.

I won't recount for you the long history of the controversy or changing vision. But the most relevant parts are these: The Board of Supervisors is on record as having deemed the current location as adequate for any future middle school in Blacksburg. This led us to commission architects to draw up conceptual plans for a large scale expansion and renovation of the current school. However, updated demographic projects for the Blacksburg Middle School student enrollments suggest that within ten years we may well have some 1200 students. Most educators and parents think that is too large for a single middle school. And last summer a value engineering study by Marsh-Witt, commissioned by the Board of Supervisors, suggested that the county should seriously consider having two middle schools. A Blacksburg community group convened by the SB to discuss this issue concurred that two middle schools was the best option. Consequently, last December the SB sent a resolution to the Board of Supervisors requesting that they seek land in Blacksburg for a second middle school as well as for an eventual new HS. We have been looking at various land possibilities since then, and I am optimistic on that score.

But the supervisors have not yet officially changed their minds. So in June, Joe Gorman, the chair of the BoS, requested that we gather figures to spell out the cost differences between having one and two middle schools in Blacksburg. (The "Current" section of the RT last week mistakenly stated that their request came in December.) We presented this information at our own board meeting on August 4th, and will now make a presentation to the Board of Supervisors at their meeting on Monday, August 24th, at 7pm, in the County courthouse building in Christiansburg (3rd floor). I will not only be presenting the cost figures, but generally trying to make the case that the supervisors should accept the idea of 2 middle schools in Blacksburg, and that they should purchase the necessary land, and move forward with that project. The new figures we are using are predicated on starting the project in summer of 1999, and completing it by summer of 2001. I will not spell out the figures here, but in summary: The newly projected costs for the full expansion/renovation of the current school for 1200 students is about $26.5 million. The newly projected costs for buying and building on a new site, plus renovating the current building, are about $24 million. Annual operating costs for having two schools would be about $240,000 higher. When you compare that with the higher yearly debt service that the $26.5 million would entail, it turns out that the two school option would cost about $35,000 PER YEAR more than the one school option. That is a small difference. The two school option will also give us more room to expand for future growth, and give us more humanly sized middle schools.

I urge any of you who are still interested in this issue (you must have an awful lot of patience!) to attend the BoS meeting and even speak at the public address portion of that meeting.

2) Discipline Study Follow-Up. A community group has been convened to follow up on issues raised by the discipline report. It has about 30 people, including principal, teacher, and parents from each of the secondary schools, and other representatives from the schools and community. We have had two meetings already. Our next is this week. I feel this has been a very positive move. There is a good deal of diversity within the group, and a number of tough issues are being discussed. At some stage the discussions will move to the building level, and involve a wider variety of folks, including students.

3) Charter Schools. In June, Wat Hopkins and I attended a training session on charter schools. The legislature has given local school districts a great deal of control over any charter schools. But along with this comes a great deal of responsibility in evaluating and over-seeing them. We will be making a report to the school board at our August 18th meeting (which will be at the new Auburn Elementary School). The school board will eventually decide whether it is willing to accept applications for proposed charter schools in the district, and if so, what the procedure will be for assessing the applications. If you have any interest in charter schools, I urge you to attend this meeting. I hope that we will decide to accept applications. However, I have not heard any interest within the community from people considering proposing a charter school here.

Perhaps that's enough for now. Please remember that this newsletter is simply my personal perspective on things, and is not an official school board publication. Please let me know if you want to be removed from my mailing list, or if you know others who would like to be added. Please feel free to respond to my comments, or ask me questions, by return e-mail.

Jim Klagge
District F Representative
School Board Chair.

email: admin@gisone.com