New Prices Fork School closer to reality
A new, bigger, up-to-date elementary school has been more than needed in Montgomery County for several years. A land swap taking place between Virginia Tech, the Virginia Tech Foundation, and Montgomery County will allow the space necessary for an elementary school to be built. The Virginia Tech Foundation is going to swap fourteen acres of their Heth Farm, for twenty acres Virginia Tech owns next to Prices Fork Elementary and across the way from M&M Tire. Montgomery County will then buy that land from the Virginia Tech Foundation for $1 million.
“It’s something that’s been a long time coming,” said Price’s Fork Elementary Principal Dollie Cottrill, “We’re definitely looking forward to being part of a new building and a new phase for the community.” Prices Fork Elementary, which was built in 1954, is overcrowded. Teachers have no option but to share rooms and some 80 of the 198 students are taking classes in portable units outside which are cold, damp, and have rumbling heaters.
The new elementary school will be able to hold up to six hundred students containing thirty-five classrooms. This will allow every teacher and nurse to have their own classroom, something unavailable now in the current elementary school. Construction is said to begin in spring 2009.
Residents of the school’s surrounding areas are excited as well. The new elementary school won’t just be a center of learning for their children, but will also serve as a center for the community having brand new baseball and playing fields. “The elementary school is ‘the core’ of the village because community events take place there as well as the education of residents’ children,” added Wendell Jones, Chairman of the Montgomery County School Board.
-Michael Weaver
Tags: Land Swap, Montgomery County, School