Murphy – In March, Dr. Jeana Conley recommended to the Cherokee County Board of Education to reduce the number school campuses over the course of several years – not immediately – as the result of a feasibility study.
Next week, the community gets to tell the board what they think. The public hearing for the long-range plan starts at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 20, in Murphy High School and continues until 9 p.m.
Due to state restrictions under the State of Emergency, there are options available for the community to voice their opinions remotely. There were also plans to space people out in classrooms. After the April board meeting, Conley, superintendent of Cherokee County Schools, said she was following Executive Order 131, issued on April 9, which put maximum occupancy limits on retail stores. Those limits changed with Executive Order 138, which went into effect Friday evening.
Instead of five people for every 1,000 square feet of a location’s total square footage, now 12 people are allowed for every 1,000 square feet. Murphy High School is 75,243 square feet in size, according to the feasibility study. That technically means up to 900 people could be in the building at the same time.
The long-range plan has three phases and consolidates schools over eight years:
- Phase 1, the Schools of Innovation project, has already begun in Peachtree and is expected to be completed by fall 2022.
- Phase 2 would build one new high school for the county on the same campus as the Schools of Innovation campus by 2025.
- Phase 3 creates a kindergarten through eighth grade school in each of the current high school subdistricts, with completion dates ranging from fall 2026 to fall 2028.
Two major issues impacting consolidation are funding and the number of students in each school.
The feasibility study went into depth explaining that the birth rate is down, causing schools to have less and less children. For example, there were 273 kindergarten students in the 2003-04 school year, compared to 189 in 2018-19.
By 2025, Conley expects there will only 961 high school students total countywide. About 350-400 of those students are expected to attend the new Schools of Innovation, which will house both Tri-County Early College High School and The Oaks Academy alternative school.
The district is already stretched with funding, the report shows. There are only six nurses for 12 campuses, with 2.5 of those positions funded by a grant.
In addition, the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners pays the salaries for 24 teachers since the state provides funding per student, not per school. The district was forced to lay off 13 teachers last year because there were too many for each school’s population.
The district is paying more than $50,000 each month to repair the aging school buildings. The newest building, Andrews Middle School, is just over 20 years old. Several schools were built in the 1950s, with Peachtree going up in 1947.
Community concerns were also addressed in the study. For transportation, the Early College was used as an example.
Students ride the bus from their home to a central location, like Hiwassee Dam High School, then board another bus to the early college. From Hiwassee Dam to the Early College is a 25-minute trip. The study states that no additional buses will be needed if schools are consolidated, and that fewer miles will be traveled in total as there will be less redundancy in routes.
When schools are closed, teachers and staff will be assigned to other schools, the study said. Class sizes are mandated by the state, and teachers can be redistributed to avoid overcrowding. Beginning in 2020, kindergarten through third grade classrooms cannot have more than 21 students.
“It is a misunderstanding that closing schools will cost jobs,” the study reads. “In fact, the opposite is true – closing schools will ensure that the employees have jobs.”
It is estimated that the district can save more than $1 million each year once it consolidates to a point that the number of teachers match those allotted by the state.