"Charlottesville's City Council on Monday endorsed a set of "guiding principles" for preserving and redeveloping the Jefferson School, but left open the matter of whether the city's preschool should remain there, prodding the absent School Board to make a decision.

Board members were out of town at a retreat, where they were said to be discussing just that issue. At Monday's council meeting, meanwhile, residents argued for preservation of the building, for preservation of the preschool program, or for both.

The School Board has said it would prefer for the preschool program to remain in one building downtown, but some councilors and city staffers point out that such a centralized program likely would come at a steep cost to other school programs. A cheaper option, they say, would be to split the program up into schools around the city.

Without taking a position on the preschool issue, the principles approved Monday night by a 5-0 vote call for any future redevelopment of the school to include a "cultural center" in the oldest part of the school building, with exhibits on the history of the school and the Vinegar Hill neighborhood.

The Jefferson School is the last remnant of the historically black neighborhood, leveled by the city in the 1960s in the name of "urban renewal."

Priscilla Whiting, president of the Charlottesville chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Monday that the new guidelines "will allow the community to continue to use the building and feel the connection and bring us all together."

A string of former students who spoke called the school a source of pride for the city's black community, and one of the only remaining historic landmarks for black city residents.

"I look around Charlottesville, all of our historical sites are being replaced by hotels, motels, shopping centers," said Mary Carey, president of the Garrett Square tenants' association and a former student at the school. "Jefferson School is still there. If there's any renovation to be done, please do it."

Supporters of the current preschool, though, argued that just as much attention should be paid to its future. "We need to look at the very, very beginning and realize that these kids are the future," Albemarle County resident Kate Hamilton said. "It's great to preserve the historic aspect - I applaud that - but we also need to look at the future."

As they did in a joint meeting with the School Board on Friday, some city councilors expressed frustration that the board has developed no clear directive on how to deal with the preschool.

"I think that they're struggling with the fact that some major renovation of the existing building needs to be done" for the preschool to remain there, Councilor Maurice Cox said, noting that the money for such a renovation would have to come from elsewhere in the city schools' budget.

"Is it teachers' salaries?" he added. "Is it classroom size? What, if they look in their budget, would they have to cut?" Cox said the School Board should make no such decision before studying the matter and taking it to the public.

Councilor Kevin Lynch defended the board. "It's tough for them to maintain the buildings that they have with the budget that they have," he said, proposing that the council allocate general city money to a preschool project.

Councilor David J. Toscano argued, though, that building a new centralized preschool or refurbishing the Jefferson School. to keep the preschool there would take more money than either the School Board or the council has to give.

The answer, he said, could be partnering with a developer to build on part of the site, then using the proceeds for the preschool program., Toscano noted that the matter has been bouncing around city government for more than a decade.

"Let's get on with it," he said. "This has been on the capital improvements budget for the city for the last 12 years. It's time to get on with it."" (Jake Mooney, The Daily Progress, November 20, 2001)