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New building
has support,
opposition
By SHARON KILPATRICK
Rappahannock Ntw> SUIT Writer
Most of the roughly 200 people who came out for the public meeting on school expansion last Thursday questioned the need for a separate building to house a middle school.
Several speakers said that alternatives such as expanding the elementary school and using modular classrooms to take care of a “temporary spike” in enrollment hadn’t been explored enough. Some suggested that the county not get involved in building a middle school without going to the voters with a referendum.
School Board Chairman Beverly Massie opened the meeting by thanking people for coming out and saying eveprone would have an opportunity to speak. “Nothing is engraved in stone,” she said.
“In the past we waited until push comes to shove to get the things we needed,” she said. “We waited from 1975 until the end of the ’80s to get the expansion here at the high school that was needed for a long time. The population figures have dwindled in the school system; now they are on the rise again. It’s not something that needs to be done tomorrow, but we need to plan for the future.”
School Superintendent David Gangel presented the data the expansion committee used in its study, including information on the cost of providing vocational education at Piedmont Technical School and preliminary cost estimates of providing vocational education locally.
- He had added information on the number of regular classrooms that have been converted to other use since 1977, effectively reducing the capacity of the elementary school that once held over 800 students and now is approaching capacity at about 620.
Four classrooms are used for kindergarten, which was added in 1977. One classroom is used for vocal music and art and will be converted to a regular classroom before expansion. Another classroom is only used port time because the teacher teaches most of the day in the computer room. That will also be converted to regular classroom use before expansion.
Sm NEW SCHOOL, p. A-6
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