Stephens BOE Moves Tuesday Meeting to SCHS With EES Closing Vote Planned

With a vote planned on whether or not to close Eastanollee Elementary School, the Stephens County Board of Education will hold its meeting Tuesday in a larger location.

At a work session Thursday evening, the Board of Education voted unanimously to move the site of Tuesday’s regularly scheduled board meeting to the Tugaloo Center for the Performing Arts at Stephens County High School.

The meeting will still begin at 5:30 p.m.

It is on Tuesday that the school board is expected to vote on a budget reduction plan that would close Eastanollee Elementary School, re-structure grades Pre-kindergarten through five, and include a corresponding reduction in force.

Thursday’s work session also gave school board members a chance to ask final questions about the proposal before their expected Tuesday decision.

Stephens County School Superintendent Bryan Dorsey said the question he has received the most over the last few days dealt with the idea that has been raised of going to three schools that held grades Pre-K through 4, instead of dividing schools by grade level.

Dorsey said that going the Pre-K through 4 route at each school requires more cost.

“If we go to a Pre-K through 4, we are putting three schools at the same operational needs,” said Dorsey. “Right now, that Pre-K/Kindergarten does not have the same operational needs and honestly, if we needed to reduce its operation even further, there are still a couple of positions that we are providing for that institution that is not required.”

He said that having three Pre-K through 4 schools could increase the cost to the school system by as much as $400,000 to $500,000 from the proposal offered by Dorsey.

In addition, he said that would require a re-zoning process that could be more complicated than just dividing Eastanollee’s students and Dorsey again said that he has received positive feedback from staff regarding bringing grades together from an academic perspective.

Board member Dr. Elizabeth Pinkerton said she feels curriculum will benefit as well.

“I just love having the curriculums the same,” said Dr. Pinkerton.

Meanwhile, Dorsey also discussed transportation and start time proposals with the school board.

He said that he is currently looking at a 30 minute window between the elementary start time and middle and high school start time, with Pre-K and K somewhere in between the two.

Also, Dorsey said they are looking at organizing a bus arrival rotation so that all of the buses do not all go to one elementary school at the same time.

As for bus routes, Dorsey said that they are working to make sure that bus routes as a whole are not starting earlier than they are currently, though an individual student may start earlier.

“The students who are least likely to have any change in their start times as far as travel would be the Eastanollee and Martin end,” said Dorsey. “The reason for that is when we looked at, we knew we would be very unlikely to double-route those buses.”

Dorsey was asked if it would be possible to allow parents to drop off their children at one school and have them shuttled to the other schools. He said it is too early to answer that, adding that while they are still looking at it, right now he says they have not figured out a way that could be done.

Meanwhile, Board of Education Chair Tony Crunkleton expressed concern about traffic into and out of Big A Elementary School because it only has one entrance.

Dorsey said while Big A is a challenge, elementary schools are not the chief problem.

“The place where volume of traffic significantly changes is not an elementary school, it is the middle school,” said Dorsey. “The middle school is where we will have to deal with increased volume of traffic and we do not have that ironed out.”

Crunkleton suggested that the middle and high schools going first could clear bus traffic and possibly make things easier on Big A and the other elementary schools. Dorsey said that is something staff can continue to look at if the school board approves the budget reduction plan.

Also, Crunkleton asked if there would be enough time to complete all of the necessary moving to get this done by the start of next school year.

Dorsey said he feels it can be done.

Again, the Stephens County Board of Education will meet on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Tugaloo Center for the Performing Arts at Stephens County High School.