BLACKSBURG -- Nine days in, knots in the new schedule at Blacksburg Middle School -- the hub for about 2,100 middle and high school students daily -- are slowly being unraveled.

Blacksburg's older students attend classes at the middle school beginning at 2 p.m., after the middle-schoolers have left for the day.

It's not an ideal situation, but it's keeping the teenagers in school. That has been the mantra of administrators, and some teachers and students, after the high school's gymnasium roof collapsed Feb. 13. Still, tensions are running high, and the public pressure facing everyone is evident both in public meetings and in quiet hallway discussions.

At Tuesday's Montgomery County School Board meeting, Assistant Superintendent of Operations Walt Shannon summed up his frustrations when answering a questions about the next steps: "I cannot go out and make Blacksburg High School happen again."

Interstate Restoration, hired by insurer Virginia Association of Counties, could haul away the gymnasium's rubble within a week, according to a question-and-answer document posted Friday at www.mcps.org. A cause for the collapse may be able to be determined after investigators look at what's in and under the debris. The plan for now is to rebuild the gym at the same site.

Meanwhile, staffers and students at the middle school are trying to deal with the snarls. They're working out solutions for everything from athletics to art and from traffic to textbooks.

Working conditions

BHS teachers have been working in cramped, shared spaces and without enough supplies. They are sharing their middle school counterparts' classrooms, but they have publicly decried the work areas available to them, as well as how their time is spent in the hours before classes.

"We've been really, really flexible," BHS science teacher Patricia Colatosti told school board members Tuesday night.

Her concerns have been echoed privately by several teachers.

Teachers arrive at the school at 12:30 p.m. Principal Michael Hurst said he negotiated another half-hour from the noon start time proposed by central office employees so they could fulfill the contractual 7.5-hour workday.

Colatosti said she greets "inadequate work space" during that early afternoon time.

Staffers have two separate workrooms in which to meet during planning periods and to check their e-mail and print papers before classes. One has 19 computers, two copy machines and a few desks. A second, smaller room has eight computers. Otherwise, teachers are asked to wait in the auditorium, which is filled with plastic blue chairs tables to use as desks.

"If you get a computer, they're two inches apart and there's no room to set up," Colatosti said.

Teachers asked school board members to be able to work from home using their personal computers, printers and supplies. "This way, we can be better prepared for our students. I want to be efficient," Colatosti said.

Board members said they want to accommodate that, but finding space, and vetting it for use, remains an issue.

St. Michael's Lutheran Church offered about six classrooms, where some clubs will meet before school. Other teachers also can sign up for the space.

On Thursday, employees did get their own mailboxes. During the first few days, they had used bins assigned to the various departments.

Sports

Athletic Director Jack Hencke said he thinks most of the spring sports schedules are finalized, and, as of now, no team will miss a game.

If weather postpones games, then rescheduling them could be tricky, he said.

Some warehouses have offered space for practices such as baseball, and Blacksburg building official Cathy Cook has helped to expedite the needed zoning changes, Hencke said. Practice times vary by sport.

The Blacksburg Recreation Center is allowing track and tennis teams to practice there in the mornings, and Virginia Tech has offered space for programs such as wrestling. Individual coaches are responsible for scheduling, and early morning times can be difficult because not all coaches are teachers at the high school. Some practice fields, such as the old Bill Brown Stadium, are used two or three times a day in the morning by both school-sponsored and club sports.

"We're going to wear out our fields this year," Hencke said.

Club sports, such as the NRV Lacrosse Club boys team, have yet to practice as a team because they include students from the county's four high schools, and their schedules conflict.

The biggest challenge, aside from either snowy or muddy fields, has been coordinating game times with area schools, he said.

Hencke said he tried to get some games on Saturdays, but doing so would have conflicted with other schools' events, such as proms or college-entrance exams.

Student athletes will be taken out of classes for their evening sports, which means they're likely to miss entire school days, as opposed to the end of classes.

Supplies

Students and teachers still are missing some textbooks and other supplies. Teachers got into the high school before classes resumed and had one hour to gather materials. In many cases, it wasn't enough time to get everything.

The community has brought in graphic calculators, paper, pencils and other items. Some textbook publishers also have sent complimentary books, although not full sets.

Students in Jesi Pace-Berkeley's Advanced Placement Art classes could see additional help. In Blacksburg, people are dropping off art supplies at the Blacksburg library and Main Lee Art on South Main Street.

Pace-Berkeley said she got a couple of reams of paper and boxes of paintbrushes out of the high school, but she does not have a large supply of paints and still-life art supplies. Each day, she stops in area stores to buy supplies, and managers have been good to give her discounts because of the situation, she said.

Still, she worries about students' AP portfolios, which count as their college-credit exams. Some of the items for the portfolio are still inside the high school. If they're in classrooms, they won't be accessible.

But items in students' lockers will be. Maintenance crews are expected to gather the belongings by March 12. Then they'll be taken to the middle school field house, where students can collect the box marked with their locker number.

Traffic

Additional traffic monitors could soon show up at the Blacksburg Middle School in the afternoons and evenings as school board members worry about lawsuits from the traffic jams created by the new schedule.

"That traffic is not going to get any better," Shannon said.

Cars line up along Prices Fork Road shortly before 1:30 p.m. for middle school pickup and high school drop-off, and then again at 7 p.m. for high school pickup. Those lines, combined with students hoping to leave quickly, has caused a few fender-benders, said former BHS Principal Alfred Smith. He is acting as an additional administrator during the first weeks of the transition.

Board members authorized Shannon and administrators to hire more people to direct traffic.

This week, school officials also installed rubber speed bumps on the driveway to the gravel surplus lot, where students and teachers park. To allay some of the congestion that occurred during the first week, school administrators also are allowing groups of 50 to 100 student drivers leave that gravel lot in the evening as buses are loaded to stagger the traffic.

Counseling

Board members have also asked administrators to provide counseling for staff in hopes of staving off work-related stress.

"To me, that's right now critically important," board Chairman Wendell Jones said. "It is traumatic. You've upset our employees' work lives and personal lives in a very traumatic way."

Employees should use the school system's Emergency Assistance Program if they need extra help. Students can contact the school's counseling offices for help with the stress.