Do we need a third high school?

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Do we need a third high school?				March 27, 2002

Given the fractious nature of the relationship between the board of supervisors and the school board, it’s little wonder that most local residents seem to be in a total muddle relative to the need for a third high school. Numbers, like lottery balls, tumble out of the mouths of political and educational gurus on both sides of the issue, and all of them are, in a given context, persuasive.

What isn’t arguable, however, is the fact that the enrollments at Jamestown and Lafayette, which totaled 2606 as of Sept. 13, 2001, are either close to or beyond the capacities for which the schools were designed. But, as Chuck Maranzano, the executive assistant to the superintendent, points out, it is program space capacity that is more important than design capacity, and it is in program space that the schools will be lacking, if projected enrollments of 2948 are reached in 2010.

Others, who are opposed to building a third high school, point out that Jamestown was constructed with the idea that it could be expanded if enrollments increased significantly. Maranzano denies this, however, and says that the only expansion envisioned for Jamestown was an auxiliary gym, which would duplicate the facilities at Lafayette. Furthermore, additional students mean not only additional classrooms, but ancillary facilities, such as cafeterias, as well.

The question then arises as to whether it’s financially appropriate to build a totally new academic complex, equal in every way to Jamestown and Lafayette, to accommodate the overflow. The school board evidently thinks so.

But is that what we really need to handle an excess of what may or may not turn out to be 342 more students than the schools are handling now? Do we really need a whole new athletic program, complete with 35 teams and an operating budget of over $100,000, exclusive of staff salaries? Is there really a need for new gymnasia or new auditoriums, meeting rooms, and a host of administrative positions?

Maybe not.

Not long ago, Virginia Beach decided that, instead of building a new high school, they would construct a new technology center, which would house all their vocational education and technology courses. This new center, which is being constructed at a cost of 30 million dollars, is located on the campus of Tidewater Community College, which will share the facilities with the Virginia Beach school system. Here students can take courses in everything from computers and electronics to carpentry, auto repair, cosmetology, nursing and a host of other things.

Once in the program, students take academic courses at their home high school in the morning and attend classes at the technology center in the afternoon, thus freeing up a tremendous amount of space in the regular high schools for a good part of the day.

Furthermore, the plan has the added feature of removing vocational education courses that would normally be taught in the high schools from those facilities and moving them to a central location. Hence even more space is freed up in the high schools for other classes. And all of this without the ancillary baggage that attends the building of another academic high school. In the end, each student returns to his or her home high school for academic courses, sports and other club activities.

Why wouldn’t such a plan work here? We already have in place an excellent career and technology program that could serve as the core for such an arrangement. We now offer almost as many vocational programs as they do in Virginia Beach – but without the benefit of a central location.

Under our present system, three teachers at both Jamestown and Lafayette teach business and marketing courses. Two teachers at each school teach technology courses and one teacher at each school teaches family and consumer science and building trades courses. Other courses, such as auto servicing, nursing, and the new agricultural education program, are taught only at Lafayette. Still other courses are offered at the New Horizons facilities on the campuses of Woodside and Thomas Nelson. Indeed, some students attend Thomas Nelson itself and receive college credit for their work there.

According to Tom Richardson, the director of the vocational education program at Lafayette, there are now about 900 high school students in his program. Instead of scattering their courses over the two schools and transporting Jamestown students to Lafayette or bussing students from both schools down to New Horizons or Thomas Nelson, why not consolidate the program into one building, a new vocational education center? Move the courses now being taught at the two schools into the new facility, and develop there as well the courses that are offered at New Horizons. Perhaps this could be done in conjunction with a cooperative arrangement with Thomas Nelson, as well as with other school divisions, such as York or New Kent.

Further costs could be saved as a result of not having to put in place a whole new bureaucratic administrative bundle, since the present director, now under the aegis of the administration at Lafayette, could run the program. And the 25 teachers now in the program could serve as a core faculty.

Such an arrangement would not only free up a good amount of program space in the existing schools, but it would also give us a new facility that could be used well into the future, whether the projected increases develop or not.