By GREG JORDAN
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
May 07, 2008 09:22 pm
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BLUEFIELD — Should another middle school be built in Mercer County? Candidates for the Mercer County Board of Education considered the question Wednesday while meeting with the editorial board of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.
Incumbents Mary Alice Kaufman of Bluefield and Lynn White of Athens along with candidate Mona Poling of Bluefield were each asked whether a new facility, PikeView Middle School, should be constructed next to the existing PikeView High School in Gardner.
In late April the state School Building Authority offered the county school board a $12.5 million grant for the middle school project. If PikeView Middle is built, Athens, Spanishburg, Oakvale and Lashmeet/ Matoaka schools will be reconfigured into K-5 facilities. Public hearings will be held before the board votes whether to accept the grant.
“That is, of course, a major decision,” Poling said. “It would impact so many areas. We need to check everything and look at everything thoroughly. If I was on the school board, I would certainly have questions. What would be the cost of the building? The cost of building materials have skyrocketed.”
Due to the increasing cost of fuel for school buses, transportation costs must be examined, too, Poling said. “Gas and oil prices keep skyrocketing and I don’t know if the end is in sight,” she added. “I would certainly be asking what are the transportation costs, when children would be getting on the bus, and how long they would be on the bus day by day.”
How the new school would affect parent involvement should be weighed, too, Poling said. The cost of driving to PikeView in Gardner may be prohibitive for some parents.
Kaufman said she favored the project, but she was ready to hear the input from the communities touched by it.
“I do believe in the middle school concept,” Kaufman said. “I want whatever is best for the students, and we’ll provide the best education we can for the 21st Century. I contacted three of the four schools before I voted on the project.”
Principals at what would be the middle school’s feeder facilities were asked what was already being done in conjunction with PikeView High School. Each of these educators felt their students would benefit from the middle school concept, Kaufman said, adding she would listen to parents’ thoughts and concerns, and would be “very cognizant” if they have educational reasons for opposing the middle school.
As for parental involvement, Kaufman said there are parents who already drive their children to PikeView for athletic events and other activities at the high school’s facilities.
White said she had asked the board to withdraw its funding request to the SBA until there was more public input about the project. The last in depth analysis of the PikeView Middle concept was in 1999, and circumstances have changed since that time. The idea of whether middle school could be provided in another fashion has not been examined, she said.
White said she had not seen any information from the four schools’ principals about what would be needed to offer middle school in a K-8 facility. There are also concerns about placing 11-to-14-year-old students near high school students. Princeton Middle School works well, but it is in a community away from Princeton Senior High.
“I, too, see value in the middle school curriculum. I haven’t seen why not this could be in community schools,” White said.
The present schools have “great teachers” in a small classroom setting, she said.
Board of education candidates Kenny Harmon of Kegley and Brandon K. Young of Princeton did not respond to invitations from the Daily Telegraph to participate in the editorial board session.
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