SCHOOL BOARD, CITY TO DISCUSS SCHOOL, STREETS

Cape Girardeau public schools plan to build a vocational-technical school and a high school near what one day may be the intersection of Mount Auburn Road and Southern Expressway. But school officials don't know if or when those streets will meet.

They expect to have a better idea after a meeting at 5 p.m. today at City Hall between the Cape Girardeau Board of Education and the Cape Girardeau City Council. The meeting has no agenda.

Schools Superintendent Dan Tallent said the two groups need to meet to see how the school system's plans for new schools fit in with the city's plans for the areas. The two bodies held a similar meeting Aug. 29, when the school board was planning a bond issue for building new schools.

Since then voters passed a $14 million bond issue and purchased land for a vo-tech school and a high school on the west side of Kingshighway across from the intersection of Southern Expressway. It also plans to build an elementary school at the northwest corner of Bertling and North Sprigg. Both are near large tracts of undeveloped land.

"When the city developed its plans no one in their wildest dreams thought that we were going to pass the bond issue," Tallent said.

Plans to extend Mount Auburn Road south and Southern Expressway west are not part of the city's plan for expenditures from its transportation sales tax, said Mayor Al Spradling III.

However, Spradling said, those streets could "be under a new development program," meaning that the adjacent landowner would pay for the improvements.

Besides services and road building, the council and board could discuss an arrangement between the school system and the city over the new elementary school and adjacent, undeveloped Casquin Park, Tallent said.

Why not just have planners from each organization sit down informally and work things out?

"There needs to be a philosophical agreement about it" before planners sit down together, Tallent said. The school board and the city council, as the policy-making authorities, need to work that out before the technicians get to work.

Councilman Melvin Gately, a former school principal, initiated the first meeting and wants to make the joint meetings a regular affair.