Life is about to get easier for disabled people who need access to Richmond's public schools.

After years of neglect, a lawsuit, a settlement and a little more than two years of legal wrangling, the school system is about to begin the hard work of bringing its aging buildings into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The school system's ADA coordinator last week released a list of 97 projects at 33 schools. The list encompasses about two-thirds of the work to be done in the first year of a five-year plan to which the School Board agreed in its settlement with a group of parents who sued over access to the schools.

The projects will cost about $2 million. An additional $5 million might be available July 1, pending approval of the city budget. That money would allow for completion of first-year projects -- including elevators for William Fox Elementary and Richmond Community High schools -- and a substantial start on the second year.

"It's headed slowly in the right direction," said Vicki Beatty, one of the parents who brought the suit and a mother of two elementary school students. Her sons go to different schools because their home school, Fox, is not accessible to a son who needs a wheelchair.

The ADA was passed in 1990 and signed into law in 1992. It took an additional 14 years -- and with the threat of legal action pending -- for Richmond's school system to agree formally to make a serious effort at ADA compliance.

"I'm really glad we've reached a point where we're beginning to solve it," said Carol A.O. Wolf, a School Board member and leading advocate of accessibility for the disabled. "It's too little, but at least it's a start."

. . .

Part of the start was hiring an ADA coordinator.

Aisha Shamburger has been at work for more than a year planning projects and working with the plaintiffs on a schedule.

"We recognize the urgency of these projects," Shamburger said.

While she and the plaintiffs don't always agree -- it took six drafts to get to the list of 97 projects -- they both recognize the obstacles facing them: money and old buildings.

"We have some buildings . . . that are extremely difficult to modify and update," she said. "Whenever you get into a modification, it's a challenge."

Richmond Community, built in 1916, has electrical lines running close to bathrooms, which complicates the process of adding accessible toilets.

At Open High, the 1911 building might not be structurally sound enough to stand the demolition necessary to add an elevator. A ramp is planned for now.

"It's not an overnight process," Shamburger said.

But it's not an open-ended process, either. The agreement with Beatty and the other plaintiffs set out a five-year timetable for bringing every city school into compliance. That clock started ticking when the School Board agreed to the settlement in January 2006.

By the time the first project is completed this summer, the school system will be halfway through the time allotted.

. . .

Funding the projects long has been a problem.

The School Board set aside money in the past but used it for other projects, a fact cited by Mayor L. Douglas Wilder in his decision to fight the settlement.

Wolf said Wilder was right about the school system squandering money -- but wrong to fight the settlement.

"Just because he's right does not absolve anybody of the responsibility to make this legal," she said.

Added Beatty: "For 17 years, there have always been other priorities. . . . There was always something more important. I think we were stonewalled for a long time."

Completing the list of projects in the five-year plan would take at least $25 million, Shamburger said. That's $2 million more than estimated during the settlement two years ago and $7 million more than when a list first was formulated three years ago by an outside architect.

Even if the schools get the $5 million from City Council in July, that'll leave at least $17 million worth of projects on the list.

One idea for raising money is selling surplus property. The City Council simplified that this month by passing a resolution allowing the school system to keep the proceeds from such sales. In the past, unused school properties were given back to the city, which sold them and kept the money.

"The School Board is going to have some hard choices to make," Beatty said. "Richmond doesn't close schools. They talk about it, but they don't do it."

Wolf has taken a different approach, openly pushing for the sale of other property controlled by the schools. Her wish list includes two warehouses near the Boulevard, a vacant school at Chamberlayne and Azalea avenues, and the Arthur Ashe Center.

"Part of my problem with ADA is nobody has taken responsibility," she said. "This is not elective surgery.

"Budgets are moral documents. How you spend your money reflects your values."

. . .

Beatty is ready for the fight to end.

"We should have been a team," she said. "But we spent two years as adversaries."

More than anything, she'd enjoy a moment to relax.

"It takes a lot of energy to be mad," she said.

Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or zreid@timesdispatch.com.