Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 27, 1994 TAG: 9408290031
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Robert Young of Dalton Intermediate and Jerry Glass of Belle Heth Elementary added their recommendations to the stack at Thursday's School Board meeting.
Technology items - including new computers, telephone systems for offices and classrooms, video equipment and access to on-line services - topped all the lists. But new desks, carpeting, painting and other refurbishing weren't far behind. Glass's list included a new gymnasium as well as classrooms for special-needs students.
When a list of capital-improvement and equipment recommendations for the School Administration Building comes in, school officials will sharpen their pencils to set priorities and figure out the bottom line.
"We're trying to do a systematic review of our facilities," Radford School Board Chairman Guy Gentry said Friday. The city's capital-improvements plan already includes the schools, but he said the school division wants "a more detailed capital improvements plan" of its own.
Capital improvement and new equipment requests have been victims of tight budgets for several years, making it harder and harder to catch up, the board chairman said. "There have been years when we had nothing.
"It gets out of your grasp to keep up with it or catch up with it," he said, adding that there are always surprises, like emergency repairs.
Complying with the recent Americans with Disabilities Act has added new wrinkles. The system had budgeted less than $50,000 for necessary changes to buildings to make them accessible to those with disabilities. The only bid to do the work was $149,000, Gentry said. "We'll have to go back to the drawing board on that."
City schools have made some progress on the technology front. Radford High School recently unveiled more than $185,000 worth of computerized technology in its library and classrooms. The new hardware and software includes systems for vocational education students and business classrooms.
by CNB