Chesapeake, meet your School Board candidates

CHESAPEAKE

They talk about raising achievement levels and providing a first-class education and worry about the tightening budget.

But when the six candidates for Chesapeake School Board talk with voters, they said, one of the first issues raised is school safety. This year’s candidates agree that maintaining safe schools should be a top priority .

On May 6, Chesapeake voters will fill four open School Board seats. The candidates – three of whom are incumbents – will serve a four-year term in the growing city .

Campus shootings, particularly those at Virginia Tech, brought the issue even more to the forefront.

Earlier this month, an 18-year-old Western Branch High School student was charged with bringing a gun to school. Then, last week, hundreds of students stayed home from school or left early after rumors spread around Western Branch of an impending disturbance .

“Students ought not have to walk into the building and worry about what’s in the next kid’s backpack,” candidate George Van Laethem said.

Tina Pullen emphasized the importance of communication with parents and called for a gang awareness program that includes the entire community.

Security monitors patrol the hallways at every school, and uniformed police officers are stationed at the secondary schools. Cameras are in all the schools and buses. Also, schools built since the mid-1990s were designed with relatively few blind spots.

Tom Mercer, board chairman for the past four years, said he’s stopped short of advocating for metal detectors and other measures he considers extreme. “There’s always more that can be done, but we’ve taken a proactive approach,” he said.

Crowding, however, undermines the safety measures that are in place, Melvin Marriner said. Most of the high schools are at or above capacity, he said, and crowded areas are harder to manage .

The board has approved plans to expand Western Branch . Work is scheduled to begin this summer.

A new Oscar Smith Middle School is scheduled to open in September 2009. Also, a new high school is slated to open at Centerville Turnpike and

Elbow Road in 2012-13, according to the division’s latest Capital Improvement Plan. Funds would come from a stash of money set aside in a “lockbox” for new construction and major maintenance projects.

Several candidates – including incumbent Brenda Johnson, Mercer and Pullen – said they are ready to move forward with a new high school.

Others were not opposed but said they wanted to make sure the division had the funds and the population to sustain another school. Van Laethem and incumbent Jeff Bunn also mentioned that they didn’t want existing buildings to be shortchanged on repairs and upgrades.

Besides safety and managing growth, the candidates are adamant that budget cuts need to be kept as far from the classroom as possible. Also, keeping the division’s teachers salaries at the national average and maintaining competitive benefits should be a priority, they said.

Van Laethem said the board needs to learn how to better articulate the school division’s needs to City Council and General Assembly representatives. “If we want our children to be the best,” he said, “we have to give them the best in the classroom.”

Hattie Brown Garrow, (757) 222-5562, hattie.brown@pilotonline.com