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Our View
Selling gyms
School Superintendent Bob Chappell and the
School Board’s goals are right on. They wants
schools that are “second to none in service to our children, the most important people in the county.”
But these are still tight times in America and selling school projects as the population ages and young parents move away is harder than it looks. Everywhere the graying population of Rappahannock turns there are rising costs and hard-to-meet demands. Medical treatment costs and prescription drug costs are up, gasoline prices are rising, pay raises are scant and jobs in Virginia can disappear to Mexico as fast or faster than the proverbial Mexican jumping bean.
Now comes the School Board with a $3.8 million capital improvement program. It wants the Board of Supervisors to approve asking the state bonding agency to sell the bonds on Wall Street. All of this sounds quite reasonable.
About half of the expenditures are must do items like a new roof for the elementary school and upgrades to its electrical system to make a 1965 building able to handle the powerful computers and teaching tools of 2004.
But $1.72 million are three key expansion projects including a classroom addition and auxiliary gymnasium at the elementary school off Lee Highway and an upgrade of the Rappahannock High School’s track and athletic field.
When you listen to Chappell and the teachers, coaches and students, those requests seem urgent and necessary. The classroom addition will permit band and choral practice for more students seeking this popular program and the gym will allow teams to practice while others are playing contests at the high school. The fact remains that the student body has not increased in size significantly for five years. It was just over a 1,000 students then and it is now.
What has increased is the educational thirst of the youngsters and the greater opportunities before them. Title 9, for instance, means that young women can play every sport in equal numbers which gives them better health and confidence than their mothers. But it also means there are two teams when there was once one.
The nearly 7,000 residents of Rappahannock will pay higher taxes to float this bond issue and many of them no longer have school age children. The School Board must not simply sell the supervisors, but persuade the people of Rappahannock to back these projects.
Can the gym and the track be used for adult recreation and health programs? Can there be night meetings in the new classrooms? Can the facilities help keep students active and off the highways at night? Before hurrying the Board of Supervisors to bite into new costs, sell the project to the public and they’ll sell the supervisors.
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