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W-JCC Board Changes Plans: Conflict Over a New Road Caused Plans for an Alternative Education Building to Change.

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 June 2006, 12:00 CDT

By Bentley Boyd, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.

Jun. 21--JAMES CITY -- The School Board wants free city land behind Berkeley Middle School, where it hopes to put up a two-story building for central office staff, student services and records storage. It would open by the fall of 2007.

Last year's plan was for the site to be home to the Center for Educational Opportunities program, an alternative education effort that this year had 60 students in 14,000 square feet of space in an Eastern State Hospital building off the Longhill Connector.

On Tuesday, the School Board endorsed the new multipurpose building plan for the Berkeley site and the search to find 20,000 square feet of space for the alternative education program.

But city officials want another look at the Berkeley site. A year ago, the City Council donated 2.89 acres. The school district's plans for a 30,932-square-foot building costing $5.6 million were approved by the city's Planning Commission. But conflict over who would pay for a new road to serve the site prompted the School Board to table that plan in January.

The site is connected to the Berkeley bus loop by a dirt road. The alternative education program wouldn't fit the site well because "it's just too congested without a new road to that site," Superintendent Gary Mathews told city and county officials Tuesday morning.

So Mathews and Robert Becker, assistant superintendent for operations, have been working on a plan to put the district's administrative staff into a building on the city site near Berkeley. They also began researching two possible buildings to buy for the alternative education program for about $2 million.

The program has been at Eastern State since 2001. The program is for middle and high school students who prefer a more structured, personalized setting or who have been suspended or expelled for disciplinary reasons from their regular school.

On June 1, City Manager Jack Tuttle wrote a letter to the City Council recapping these developments and saying, "Given these changes in the purpose, scope and timing of the project, the city's donation of nearly three acres of land should be re-evaluated as well."

Mathews and Becker told the School Board about these developments at its June 6 meeting. Board members agreed the district's central office space at the James City County Government Complex is too small - boxes are stacked in hallways for storage.

Board member John Alewynse said finding space for alternative education should take priority. "If that meant putting the property behind Berkeley at risk, then we put it at risk," he said. "I think the educational mission is more important than administrative space."

Tuesday night the School Board approved these changes to its capital improvement plan. It would like to build the office space by Berkeley for $5.4 million. And the revised plan for the center's space now costs about $1.5 million more than was budgeted in the current capital improvements plan.

"I'm interested in where the money is coming from," Alewynse said. "Now we're talking about two facilities."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Daily Press

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