3 on board cull options for schools

Three Charlottesville School Board members said Thursday that the division should look into either leaving its grade configuration as is or having one middle school instead of both an upper elementary school and middle school.

The narrowed-down choices by chairman Ned Michie and board members Kathleen Galvin and Colette Blount reflect the two options that garnered support late last month from parents and other community members.

Getting more details about having one middle school, Blount said, would be necessary before settling on either.

“I think that will help to fuel our decision,” she said.

The city school division has been considering changing its setup after an efficiency study suggested that an elementary school be closed so the division could more efficiently use its buildings.

The initial four proposed options were: to leave the division as is; eliminate one elementary school; have six elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school; or have six elementary schools, one middle school and one high school.

Charlottesville has six elementary schools, one upper elementary school, one middle school and one high school.

But board member Juandiego Wade on Thursday said he is inclined to leave the division as it is, saying that is what he heard the most support for over the past several months and during countless community meetings.

“They said, don’t mess with a good thing,” Wade said.

At last month’s workshop, parents decided against having two middle schools largely because of worries that it would create racial and economic inequity within the city’s schools.

Before Walker Upper Elementary School was established to house the fifth and sixth grades, Charlottesville had two middle schools that many parents saw divided along racial and economic lines.

Wade and board member Leah Puryear said they had strong concerns about Buford Middle School and its student achievement. Puryear said that regardless which of the two grade configurations are chosen, “Buford needs some attention, some fiscal attention with regard to the facilities. We must keep that in mind.”

Galvin said she wanted to leave both narrowed options on the table because the division needs to figure out if it would be able to consolidate its central offices and expand some of its alternative education programs without freeing up one school building.

“I don’t know where that extra building space is going to come from,” she said.

Board members bandied about the idea of using Crow Pool — which will close when the new Smith pool is finished next year — as a possible site for the division’s Central Office. But Michie said that board members also need to answer whether it would be worth it to reduce the city system by one school, and all that entails, if the space issues could be resolved.

“To me that’s kind of the big question,” he said.