BEDFORD -- School board members in Bedford County are turning to an outside consultant to help determine which capital improvement projects to take on next.

The board voted 7-0, with one member absent, Thursday evening to pay construction company MB Kahn of Roanoke $35,000 to conduct a study of the school system's facilities, and help project its long-term building needs.

"With the JF [Jefferson Forest] and Staunton River projects behind us, it is kind of like, 'What next?' " school board Chairman Gary Hostutler said.

Two large projects -- a $38.5 million renovation at Jefferson Forest High School and a $5.9 million renovation at Staunton River High School -- will be completed this fall.

Building a fourth middle school in the New London area of the county to ease overcrowding at Forest Middle School is near the top of the board's capital improvement wish list. But the list of smaller projects at elementary schools continues to grow, and that, coupled with decreasing enrollment, has school board members wondering what the next best step would be.

William Cram of MB Kahn said possible remedies to the overcrowding at Forest Middle include building a fourth middle school or expanding the current school.

Another option, he said, is to build a new school and split grades five through eight between the new school and the existing Forest Middle School building. He also offered the possibility of building a school to accommodate kindergarten through eighth grade, relieving overcrowding in the middle school and the district's elementary schools.

MB Kahn will be paid $25,000 for the base study and an additional $10,000 to subcontract with Dale Holden & Associates to provide enrollment projections. Now, the county's 21 schools serve less than 11,000 students.

The study will take about six months to complete.

Hostutler said he hopes the findings of the study can be used to persuade the board of supervisors to lift the school system's $8 million annual debt cap.

"If that is the cap, then we can't fix some of these things for a very long time," he said.

"It could be 2018 or 2020 to get our debt line down to take on a $30 million project" such as a new middle school, Hostutler said.

Capital improvement projects have been a source of discord between the two boards. The two bodies disagreed for about seven years before moving forward with the multimillion-dollar renovations at Jefferson Forest.

In other school board news, Karen Woodford, literacy development specialist, said it appears Bedford Elementary and Bedford Primary schools did not meet Adequate Yearly Progress goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The state will release official results later this month, but if preliminary calculations hold true, the school system will be required to offer students public school choice.

If AYP is not met, parents of students in those schools will be notified by mail about the option to transfer their children to Big Island Elementary for the upcoming school year.