MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Marsha Hertel of Blacksburg walks her dog Bella on the Huckleberry Trail. The Heth farm and Virginia Tech Research farms can be seen in the background. Montgomery County is in the process of obtaining a portion of the property to trade to the university for land for a new school in Prices Fork. The county will pay $1 million to the Virginia Tech Foundation for 16 acres of the 326-acre tract.

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors is expected to vote on a land deal Monday that would allow Montgomery County to build an elementary school in Prices Fork.

If approved by Tech's board and the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors, the university would exchange 20 acres near the existing Price's Fork Elementary School for 16 acres that the county will acquire from the Virginia Tech Foundation for $1 million.

By involving the foundation, a private nonprofit that manages the university's endowment and acquires property to benefit the university, Tech can avoid state involvement in the transaction. If Tech were to sell the Prices Fork property directly to the county, it would have to declare a land surplus and the money from the sale would go to the state's general fund. Tech would then have to petition the legislature to get the money from the sale.

The board of visitors is also expected to vote Monday on whether to admit the county into the Blacksburg-Christiansburg-VPI Water Authority.

Monday's quarterly meeting, taking place at 1:15 p.m. in Tech's Torgersen Hall, will be preceded by committee meetings at the Inn at Virginia Tech on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.

The board will not set tuition and fee rates for the upcoming academic year as it typically does during its March meeting. Rates will not be set until after the General Assembly's April 8 veto session.

Other issues the board is expected to vote on include:

n Approval of construction of a privately funded $18 million addition to the Jamerson Center that would provide a new football locker room, athletic training room and office space.

n Approval of the university's 2010-16 Capital Outlay Plan outlining construction projects planned for that period.

n Approval to begin planning the relocation of the department of dairy science's nonlactating herd from east of the U.S. 460 bypass to Kentland Farm.