By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 12, 1998; Page V01

Tom DeBolt was animated, his hands pointing to spots on the open floor where chairs and desks will go, describing a grand place where students will have the opportunity to excel. His eyes, though focused on the old high school just yards away, saw much further into the future of Manassas Park.

"The question is: How do we change from what we were to what we can be?" said DeBolt, the city's school superintendent, as he was interrupted by a nail gun's blast amid construction on the high school's third floor. "We need to take a quantum leap forward. I think we can do it."

For Manassas Park's school system, where students' test scores have languished at a level far below the rest of its Northern Virginia neighbors and just below the state's average for years, the new high school being built on Euclid Avenue is a monument to change. For Manassas Park residents, the $14.2 million project is testimony of a city taking aim at success.

The current high school, Manassas Park, sits surrounded by bulldozers and construction workers and is covered in dust from the mammoth project next door. Its sign is missing an "S". Students there call it "the Warehouse." Its sprawling temporary classrooms have outlived their 20-year expected lifespan. The outdated facility captures the identity crisis many students feel, and many say its "big brother" going up next door might be the answer.

"I think we will use the new school as a way to give people new spirit," said Stephanie Foster, 17, who will be a senior at Manassas Park and president of the Student Council Association. "We've been so down on ourselves; this should be a chance to raise enthusiasm about Manassas Park."

Foster said students from area schools, and even her friends, make fun of Manassas Park High. Jackie Wilson, 17, who will be the senior class secretary and treasurer in the fall, said she and other students are fed up with the ridicule.

"I'm just looking forward to other schools not being able to criticize us for being a small school," Wilson said. "I think other schools will be intimidated by us."

DeBolt's excitement about the project is contagious, and the community has been swept up in it. The high school is a project DeBolt says he hopes will boost the school system's "institutional self-image." He talks of a futuristic high school with lots of glass and mirrors, a "Gone With the Wind" staircase and a food court.

Visions of 21st-century technology are coming to fruition. DeBolt said that there will be five technology laboratories, each equipped with 24 computers, and that each classroom will have a teacher projection station -- a powerful computer with a 37-inch color monitor mounted on the wall, including DVD, CD-ROM, CD and VCR units. And that's all in addition to the hundreds of laptop ports all over the building, hard wired to the Internet.

"We are trying to get ahead of the wave, if you ever are, in technology," DeBolt said. "If you accept technology as something that is like a backpack -- a necessary element of education -- then we had to take it as a given."

Vonna Privett, vice chairman of the School Board, said the new technology will take the system out of the era of "chalk and talk" education and bring Manassas Park's curriculum up to par with the state's Standards of Learning for computer-assisted education.

The new school's curriculum will abandon two programs, cosmetology and auto body repair, and replace them with technical computer repair and network engineering -- a move DeBolt said is to mirror the job market's shift from craft occupations to information age skills. There will be a modern TV studio and an increased emphasis on visual arts, including a kiln room and a student work display area.

Technology also will be the academic specialty of a new high school in Prince William County, which is scheduled to open in September 2000. The county's eighth high school -- which will hold as many as 2,200 students, almost 3 1/2 times the size of Manassas Park's new school -- will cost $31 million. That school will have an observatory and will be wired for high-tech education.

As DeBolt stepped over large sections of pipe and dodged vertical steel beams of the new high school's skeleton, he spoke of a place where students could learn the skills they need for the world as well as a place students would want to be.

"You could walk in and go to the school's store, then grab a doughnut," he said, motioning to the right of the evolving lobby. "Then you could walk into the welcoming atrium and sit with friends or plug into the Internet before class."

The atrium, the school's centerpiece, completes what DeBolt called the school's "little Embassy Suites."

"We wanted to make a statement," DeBolt said. "We wanted a comfortable place where kids could work independently or in groups, and we wanted to take full advantage of the technology available to them."

The atrium will be a multifunction space. It will be a student gathering area before and after school. It will be a cafeteria at lunch time. And for performances and school assemblies, rows of seats will emerge from hidden storage underneath the large stage at the atrium's north end.

The school, which can accommodate 650 students but will enroll only 400 when it opens in November, is not large. Its gym, which will have hardwood floors and a capacity of more than 1,200, is imposing. It is surrounded by health education rooms, locker rooms and a fitness center, which will have free weights and exercise machines. There are plans to open the gym to the community, for a small fee, in the morning and at night.

"We wanted a little, struggling school district that has been well below state averages on test scores to create a better place and better way to learn," DeBolt said. "I think we can change the outcomes."

Manassas Park, which has not had more than 25 students take the Scholastic Assessment Test in any given year since 1992-93, has been well behind the City of Manassas and Prince William County in its test scores. In the 1992-93 school year, Manassas Park students averaged a total of 850 on the standardized test, 155 points lower than Manassas students and 161 points lower than their counterparts in Prince William. That year, Manassas Park was 147 points behind the state average and 153 behind the national average. In the 1996-97 school year, Manassas Park students had an average SAT score of 939, with a new test structure in place. By that year, Manassas Park had bridged the gap somewhat, still coming up short of Manassas by 54 points and Prince William by 80 points. Manassas Park was behind the state average by 64 points and the national average by 76.

For a city with an annual budget of $41 million and a school budget of $10 million, the new high school is a mammoth project, the largest in Manassas Park's history. And right on the heels of the high school will be a larger elementary school building, now being discussed in the range of about $15 million, which is scheduled for ground-breaking next July.

William J. Treuting Jr., a member of the City Council, said that the two projects' major stumbling blocks were the questions of how to pay for the new schools and when to start building. He said the council has been discussing building a school for close to eight years. The reality that the council and the School Board faced, however, is a surge of younger students in the Manassas Park schools -- some of the lower grades are three times the size of last year's graduating class. "We expect this growth to continue," Treuting said. "The bottom line was that, yes, we could go forward, and, yes, we could afford it."

With state education loans and the issuance of bond anticipation notes, the City Council approved the projects as a long-term investment both for the city and for the children.

"Are we borrowing more than we would like? Sure," Treuting said. "But this is a major investment in the future of this city."

Mayor Ernest L. Evans said the school projects have been in the city's sights since the turn of the decade, when estimates of enrollment predicted soaring numbers.

"It is a risk. Everybody had to bite a bullet, but it had to be done," Evans said. "The city is moving ahead at a good pace, and the direction we are headed requires improvement of our schools. The whole city is coming together around this."

But DeBolt said results might not appear for a few years. He's gambling that test scores will rise and his school system's educational outcomes will improve, but it will take time.

Said Foster, the Student Council president: "It will take a while to change things, to change other people's opinions."