MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Auburn Middle School Principal Guylene Wood-Setzer (left) watches as students leave the five mobile units on campus for a class change. The mobile units house sixth-grade core classrooms as well as a business and keyboarding class.

MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Auburn Middle School Principal Guylene Wood-Setzer points out the open classroom model in the school's library where ambient noise can be heard coming over the book shelves from a math class on the right and an English class on the left.

CHRISTIANSBURG -- Students at Auburn middle and high schools are one step closer to getting updates to their classrooms or maybe even new schools.

On Tuesday, the Montgomery County School Board authorized the facilities department to solicit for an architect to look at options for the aging schools. Before the decision was made, about half a dozen parents and students urged the board to think about all its constituents.

"There were a lot of people doing the happy dance and cheering" this morning, said middle school Principal Guylene Wood-Setzer.

Meanwhile, some Price's Fork Elementary School parents told the school board they worried what the decision could mean for their own hopes for a new school.

But "we can't just stand still," said board member Penny Franklin.

She has pushed the board to move forward on the Riner project because the land hunt for a new school in Prices Fork has been ongoing since 2005. Franklin said moving forward on the Auburn project does not mean that negotiations won't continue with Prices Fork property.

The school board would likely rebuild on its current school sites. This past year, the board of supervisors rezoned the land around school sites to general business use so building could proceed. The county government owns the 40 acres where Auburn Elementary School is, and the school board owns 30 acres that make up the campus of the middle and the high schools.

Regardless, new facilities in Auburn are a few years -- a few revenue bonds -- off. The school system has $281,000 to pay the architect to begin planning, but to pay for a complete design would require bond money. Board chairman Wendell Jones said the school system should have enough to make changes to Auburn and build the two new elementary schools in Prices Fork and Elliston that residents have been promised.

"I don't think we'll have enough to do everything we need to do at Auburn," he said.

The school system has $100 million to spend on capital projects, and still needs to address overcrowding in Christiansburg's schools.

Once a request for proposal is advertised for Auburn, it should take about two months to find an architect, said Assistant Superintendent Walt Shannon. After that, the architect would draw up a few sets of plans and the school system would hold community meetings to find the best design plans for the 70 acres of school-owned property in the Auburn strand.

The board has no timeline for the project's completion.

Upgrading Auburn schools has been on the school board's radar for years, but last spring a feasibility study showed that the buildings had inadequate space and needed modernizing.

The three schools are side-by-side on the same campus and the older grades share athletic fields and gymnasiums as well as classrooms.

More than a third of the middle school's nearly 300 students are in portable units, and some students are required to trek to the high school to take classes. The middle school, originally used as an elementary school, was built with an "open classroom" model. That means some classrooms don't have walls that run to the ceilings and they can be noisy. All of the schools are below the county's standards for space, but the middle and high schools are 57,000 and 21,000 square feet below, respectively, according to the study.

Students told the board Tuesday that that detracts from their ability to learn.

The middle school is the only one in the county with an open floor model. In the 1970s, that floor plan was popular in elementary schools.

"It works for the elementary grades, but for the middle school students it's more difficult," said Wood-Setzer.

Last spring's feasibility study put forth about six options for the properties, such as constructing a new high school and turning the current high school into a middle school or constructing a new middle school and renovating the high school. Each plan in the study also calls for updates to the elementary school.

Facilities director Dan Berenato told the board the majority of planning would be hammered out in the public meetings.

"I want a building that is going to give my students the opportunity to be the very best learners they can be, and what we have right now is not that building," Wood-Setzer said. "I want all my kids to remain at my school so that I can have a handle on it; they don't have to walk in the rain and they don't have to worry."

In other action Tuesday, the board:

n Approved getting estimates from three of 14 state-approved energy companies about energy performance contracting. The contracts, part of a nationally recognized program, would find ways for the school system to boost energy and money savings, Berenato said.

n Approved contracting with the Governor's School to send 20 students for each of the next two years.

n Approved $125,544 in additions to the 2007-08 operating budget.

n Adopted new textbooks for career and technical education students.