Whitcomb Court Elementary School sits on a trash-strewn lot, its windows covered in boards marked by crude graffiti.

Since it closed to students in June 2006, Richmond police have been dispatched there 43 times for problems ranging from fires to fights.

It's a disheartening situation for School Board member Lisa Dawson, who told Whitcomb parents in 2005 that although they were losing their neighborhood school, it wouldn't become an eyesore.

"I sat in the cafeteria and basically promised that what has happened will not happen," Dawson said recently.

In the past two years, the School Board has closed six buildings and recently recommended closing an additional five by 2015. Board members are growing concerned as more schools are added to the chopping block because the sites have no immediate plan for reuse and will sit vacant for vandals. One mothballed school even had its televisions stolen over the summer.

As a result, the board wants to talk to the City Council about the options for the closed buildings.

City administration officials say they can alleviate some of the heartburn. The city - not the School Board - owns the buildings, and when schools move out, they are supposed to revert control of the buildings to the city. It's the city's job to figure out what to do with them.

"This process is based on city and state code. Thereafter, the city will seek to find new uses for those facilities through private development and other avenues," Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder said recently.

Whitcomb Court Elementary is in the city's care. Jane Ferrara, director of real estate for Richmond, said some people have shown interest in using the building, but no one has submitted a formal proposal.

"We want to be careful about ultimately what happens with these schools," Ferrara said. "We want them to complement these neighborhoods."

Meanwhile, it remains vacant and boarded up.

. . .

Wilder's "City of the Future" plan involves building 15 schools after the School Board consolidates and closes current facilities with light attendance.

"We continue to wait for this to happen," Wilder said.

"Great opportunities exist for retrofitting the closed schools in ways that could help rejuvenate those neighborhoods," he said. "Because of the strong need for work-force housing, one possibility would be to develop additional residential units so that our police officers, firemen, schoolteachers, bus drivers and cafeteria workers can either rent or purchase a home that would be close to where they work."

The buildings also could become community centers to provide training or recreation.

Some city school buildings are historic, charming and located in sought-after neighborhoods. Others are small, architecturally unappealing and located in high-crime areas.

The School Board has shuttered but not turned back over to the city several schools, including A.V. Norrell and Patrick Henry elementary schools.

School Board members say they want to talk to City Council about returning control of the other properties to the city. For example, some of the empty buildings could temporarily house students while other schools undergo major renovations or are rebuilt as part of the City of the Future plan. A few members are wary of permanently shedding the schools in case demographics shift.

Board member Carol A.O. Wolf has questioned whether the school system could lease at least part of the buildings and use the rent to pay for improvements to schools that are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

There has been only casual, conceptual discussion about such arrangements, said City Council President William J. Pantele. The School Board's attorney, Bradford King, thinks the district would need approval from the city to enter into a lease because it owns the building.

Historically, the city and the School Board had an agreement that proceeds from the sale of a surplus property be paid to the school system for other capital needs. Pantele has asked that an ordinance be prepared to formalize that process.

He said he also has talked to the city's chief administrative officer, Sheila Hill-Christian, about whether some city functions should relocate to the old Armstrong building, on 31st Street, which closed in 2004.

Pantele said a team could be necessary to develop plans for how the closed schools will be put back to productive use - through city operations or in the hands of the private sector.

Having plans for mothballed buildings would make Dawson more comfortable, she said.

She wants the council to know that "we don't want to put them on your doorstep in a basket and run."
Contact Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or omeola@timesdispatch.com.