ROANOKE, Va. – Roanoke City Public Schools Superintendent, Verletta White, is not afraid to dream big.
As part of moving into the future of the school division, school leaders are looking to address the issue of overcapacity at the high schools.
William Fleming High School and Patrick Henry High School both are over 120% capacity. Now there are some stipulations with the data as this accounts for every single student to be at the school at the same time. It doesn’t take into account students who will spend parts of their days at other programs (ex. DAYTEC).
With overcapacity in mind, the school board was asked to consider three different options:
- Renovations to expand the current high schools
- Construction of a third high school
- Establishing a magnet high school (focused on the arts and sciences)
Superintendent White recommended to the board that she and her team want to explore option three, and the consensus around the school board was the same.
“Just like we did with DAYTEC and those CTE options, we want our students to have various options available to them. We want to celebrate what’s important to our city,” White said.
The magnet school is expected to cost $20-30 million if the division renovates a current building. A new building could cost between $40-60 million. Luckily, school leaders have already began talking with people at the Jefferson Center as the site poses a good option to become the new magnet school.
The Jefferson Center would still have programs and concerts as usual. However, the building could transform into a school during the day.
The goal of the magnet school is also not to work against some of the already established arts programs in the city...it’s to work with them.
The school would be the first Magnet High School focused on the arts in all of Southwest Virginia. School board members liked to hear that.
“I do love the idea of having a signature program in Southwest Virginia,” Natasha Saunders-Cotton said.
While the magnet school proposal is promising, some school board members expressed concerns about whether it would sufficiently address long-term capacity issues.
“I don’t want to just satisfy today’s capacity needs; I want to satisfy tomorrow’s,” Eli Jamison said. “In our proposal, what you do for the next six months, I would want to see that answered.”
The school board plans to discuss the magnet school idea further during a joint meeting with the Roanoke City Council next Tuesday.