Pennywise,

Pennywise,

pound foolish

For the last several months, a battle has been raging in Rappahannock County. The subject is the proposed $1.5 million capital outlay project at the high school.

The war over this project, however, goes back many years. Several times in the past, false starts have been made in the direction of improving the high school, but always, for one reason or another (usually money), the decision has been to abandon the effort.

As the years pass, the facilities at the high school continue to deteriorate, and the cost to refurbish them continues to rise.

Meanwhile, Rappahannock graduates find themselves facing graduates from other schools who have had the benefits of instruction in laboratories equipped for hands-on experience, of language classrooms fitted with audio equipment which makes learning easier, with cafeterias which allow them to sit and eat a meal with their friends in a reasonably comfortable setting, with gymnasiums which allow them to score a basket without bashing their head against a wall.

Several weeks ago, the Rappahannock News received a letter from an RCHS graduate, now attending college in South Carolina. Karen Ludwick wrote that she is “amazed by what the other students did in high school.” Amazed that they had the opportunity to dissect animals, to perform chemistry and physics expr^ments, to sit down in a cafeteria and eat lunch.

Miss Ludwick concluded that “the students are suffering because they live in a small county. This should be an advantage.” She is absolutely right. A small student population should mean smaller classes with more opportunities for teachers to give individual instruction.

It is difficult, however, for teachers to give that kind of help when they spend much of their free time shuttling between classrooms and setting up or breaking down equipment. It is a tribute to the calibre of the county’s teachers that they are willing to deal with these obstacles to their job: educating the county’s next generation.

True, the capital outlay proposal represents a large amount of money. But, if the project had been approved when it was first proposed, the cost would have been substantially less.

Anyone who doubts that improvements are needed at the high school probably has not visited there recently. It is an eye-opening experience, especially around lunchtime.

Arguments that the proposed improvements represent frills, not necessary to a basic education, ignore the reality of today’s world. The fact is that most school districts offer many more elective subjects than does Rappahannock, and as Miss Ludwick stated in her letter, that experience gives those students an advantage. In the competitive world in which Rappahannock’s high school graduates will find themselves, they can’t afford the disadvantage of an inferior education.

The supervisors have raised the possibility of scaling down the capital outlay project, specifically by eliminating the new gymnasium. Their last minute reservations sound a little like the bride backing out the night before the wedding.

In 1984, the School Board presented preliminary plans for a modest $850,000 expansion project with a prefabricated gym; it was the supervisors who directed that a brick and mortar gym be substituted. That and that alone almost doubled the cost, bringing it up to $1.5 million. And when the School Board came back with final plans for the building project, the supervisors voted to approve the application to the state for a literary loan.