And as for your mini-diatribe against the citizens of Blacksburg…that has been demonstrated to be so much garbage in so many ways, it’s hardly worth replying but: Why are there new two new schools in Shawsville, one new elementary in Riner with a new high school and a revamped school for the middle schoolers on the way, and a new middle school in Christiansburg? Oh, is it because B’burg is the “only voice heard in this county?” NO. Is that why the School Board bent over backward in the face of the Riner Whiners complaining about temporarily relocating Auburn Middle School students? NO.

Get off your high horse. Good day to you.

As an aside, I do live in Prices Fork and am forced to pay for town utilities that I did not request and did not wish to receive. So, I’m well aware of which precinct is in town limits and which lies outside of them.

As to WV Mountain Man, I get tired of repeating this over and over — just because a school says “Blacksburg” does not mean it only serves the Town of Blacksburg. The Blacksburg attendance zone covers pretty much the northern half of Montgomery County and is just about the largest attendance zone of the four stands. It includes Merrimac, Prices Fork, Longshop/McCoy, Brush Mountain, Ellett Valley, and out Mt. Tabor Rd. almost to the Roanoke County line. I do accept that the School Board screwed up, though, in the recent attendance zone study by not doing much of anything. It wasted the time of a lot of people and $85,000 on consultants to just decide to move basically a handful of kids from Kipps to Prices Fork (much to the dismay of the PF people). NOTE: Prices Fork and Merrimac are both IN THE COUNTY — NOT BLACKSBURG, so it was COUNTY residents complaining about who was being moved into their school, not Blacksburg “elites” as some have contended. Sheesh, at least get that right.

P.S. Just to get in front of additional poor-shaming assumptions, I’ve been married to my kids’ dad since before they were conceived, and he works full-time, often over 40 hours a week — hard, backbreaking work — but farmworkers aren’t paid much. I’m now physically disabled, so our household income puts us in the ranks of the “working-poor.”

I don’t quite understand the difficulty in building a school to house more students to accommodate either substantial future growth, or the consolidation/re-districting of the district to reduce the number of physical campuses that have to be constructed and maintained. Unfortunately we’re no longer in a flush financial time where ample money exists in the government sector through tax revenues to build smaller community-oriented schools, or really to even maintain what was built in the past 30-50 years for that matter. So given that, I have a hard time understanding why the county continues to spend so much money on so many schools, especially when with all the tax increases foisted upon the citizens, they still can’t meet their stated obligations.