Former school board member says facilities should match 21st-century education goals
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dear Editor,

I know there are good intentions to be better stewards of taxpayer dollars, but in my experience these [state] task forces often get lost in their purpose and little meaningful action results from their efforts. With proper clarity, clear public purpose and an agenda that remains constant, I hope this can be a fruitful effort and my comments will be helpful:

1) Educational facilities of the 20th century will not meet the growing and changing needs of the 21st-century.

2) Sustaining what we have will not deliver a commonwealth ready to compete on a global basis, both in attracting business and in equipping our young adults to enter a 21stcentury job market. The question must be asked, infrastructure for what?

Educational facilities can no longer prepare students for college as their exclusive charge. The commonwealth has a 25 percent dropout rate, and the marketplace is in great need [of] students other than four-year college graduates. Facilities need to support the changing dynamic in educational programs. Unskilled labor can no longer support the dropout. All children must be educated to survive in today's economy. If not, the next task force will be on our prison facilities.

3) Elected officials have the dynamic tension between pleasing the immediate gratification of the voter, who has been trained to believe that palaces are being built for schools, or supporting an infrastructure both in roads and facilities that will position Virginia for the future and strengthen our economy.

4) Please know that I am not an advocate for unnecessary or wasteful spending. Solutions for infrastructure for education cannot be about new buildings only, [so] other solutions must be sought. In this pursuit we cannot lose sight of where we must go. My sense is some think it possible to stuff 21st-century schools back into 20th-century structures - both physically and financially.

5) Careful spending must be reviewed and adjustments made, but we must be honest with the public that cost cutting will not be the sole solution of our infrastructure problems. We no longer compete with our local neighbors but with the entire world. We will not be able to get a handle on our infrastructure problems until the public understands the radical changes that have taken place outside our comfortable existence for now.
Jim Schroeder
Bon Air
 

Resident's fingers are crossed on Roseland

 

Dear Editor,

I think the old saying goes, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time." This crossed my mind as I sat and listened to the applause from the Roseland backers following the "yes" vote (4-1) [last month]. As I have said in the past, Mr. [Dave] Anderson [one of the developers of Roseland] is a great speaker, [and] I hope for the sake of the county he's not just all talk. My daddy used to say, "If you say something long enough and loud enough, sooner or later you will get those who [will] believe." Well, I guess the shouting is over, the board has given its blessing, and only the next 20 years will tell. Which category do we put the four members who heard the shouting in, and which is for [Matoaca Supervisor Marlene] Durfee who apparently had not heard it long enough [and voted against Roseland]?

As I listened to Mr. Anderson doing his presentation, I jotted down the names of the projects from around the country that he likened Roseland to. The next day I went on the Internet just to see what these were like. Harbor Town in Memphis is only 160 acres with just 6,000 square feet of commercial. I certainly don't see the comparison to Roseland's 1,395 acres with [a possible] 1.5 million square feet of commercial. Mr. Anderson continues to present Roseland as needing less car use, and yet even with Harbor Town having only 160 acres, it was deemed to be more auto-dependent than the average suburb. On a neo-traditional rating scale of 1-5 it received only a 1.33, and the housing prices were 70 percent-300 percent higher than other homes in Memphis.

I then went to his offering of Kentlands in Maryland only to discover it had been around for about 20 years and has experienced financial problems. This comparison again was quite a bit smaller at only 352 acres, and on the neo-traditional scale it only received a 1.4 rating. The commercial areas in his comparison projects included gas stations, fast food, and some even had Targets and [a] Wal-Mart. What he failed to include in his presentation is that you need big box retail to pay for the public streets.

The last one I checked was Stapleton in Denver. On this one he went completely in the other direction. Stapleton has 4,700 acres, 12,000 homes, 3 million square feet of retail and 10 million square feet of office space. It sounded like living on the corner of 9th and Main streets. Then we were treated to the family from Baxter Village in South Carolina who was strategically placed in line to speak in favor. What struck me was, if Baxter was as great as each spoke of, why were they here?

Am I the only one who heard Mr. Anderson say there would be retail in each of the seven districts along with the residential? Am I the only one that thinks that doesn't sound like a place you would want to come home to? Then there was the speaker comparing Roseland to how things used to be in places like Ginter Park or the Fan. Well, I grew up living over a paint store in Ginter Park and attended John Marshall High School in the late 50s, and trust me, I couldn't wait to get away from that type of living. If this is what they feel that this and the next generation wants, then as parents I feel we have failed in our reasoning for coming to Chesterfield many years ago.
Jerry Stroud
Lakepointe
 

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