For Rural Residents, Worry Over School Plan

Throughout the 1990s, while development rattled rural western Loudoun County, Ellen Polishuk surrounded herself with endive, Swiss chard, beets and radishes on a dead-end street five miles north of Purcellville.

But her oasis of old Loudoun could soon disappear. Just past her 180-acre Potomac Vegetable Farms and the Wheatland farm next door, the school system is planning to build an elementary school and a middle school to serve the county's growing population.

Polishuk said she is concerned about the traffic and the water table she relies on for irrigation. And she is confused about why the school system would choose a site surrounded more by vegetables than by children.

"It just seems so odd," she said. "It seems like a school should be where people can walk to it and ride their bike to it."

Polishuk is part of a growing chorus of residents near and far who are organizing to contest the proposed rural location.

The schools in question would bring an estimated 2,475 students and staff members by 2015 to what is now a grassy field two miles east of Hillsboro and about halfway between Lovettsville and Purcellville. The land, owned by longtime local farmer Robert Grubb, has been under contract with the schools since spring 2006.

The county's comprehensive plan calls for public facilities to be built adjacent to towns when possible so that they can tap into population centers and utilities. A report to the county's Planning Commission from its staff members said they could not support the school system's application for a special exception permit for the project because the site fails to meet the plan's requirements. A public hearing before the commission is scheduled for July 16.

But schools officials say the comprehensive plan leaves room for contingencies. In eastern Loudoun, school sites typically have been proffered by developers in exchange for higher-density housing. But in the west, the school system must compete with other developers for land. School planners have perused as many as 75 sites in the past few years, and crossed many off the list because of cost, topographical problems, transportation concerns, conservation easements or other limitations, said Sam Adamo, planning director for the Loudoun County public school system.

In recent years, the school system also has run into opposition from some towns while seeking a home for a second western Loudoun high school. Hamilton opposed a potential site last year, and the county-approved site adjacent to Purcellville is tied up in litigation.

Residents of the Lovettsville area say they are eager to have a middle school or high school in their back yard. But, like Polishuk and her farming neighbors, they think the Grubb property is too isolated to be home to a school community.

More than 50 people turned out for a community input session at Lovettsville Elementary School on June 13 about the proposed site, which is about five miles south of the town. Neighbors spoke about traffic congestion and the rural economy. A Hillsboro couple said a new elementary school nearby could jeopardize their smaller neighborhood schools. And many people questioned the school system's process for selecting sites and whether officials had searched the Lovettsville area thoroughly before settling south of town.

Lovettsville area parents said their chances of hosting a high school could disappear with a middle school on the Grubb property, because the school system prefers to cluster middle schools and high schools in the west on shared bus routes.