Murphy – Cherokee County commissioners and school officials have clashed on a wide range of issues surrounding facilities, but on Sept. 15 one side budged.
For three years, the school and county boards haven’t been able to agree on how to solve the county’s overabundance of aging and under-utilized campuses.
County commissioners have been pushing for a new Murphy High School to be built in Peachtree beside the Schools of Innovation and Tri-County Community College. Meanwhile, the school board has settled on a plan to consolidate Murphy Middle and Elementary schools with Martins Creek and Peachtree elementary schools in a new campus, at a location yet to be announced.
Both projects would be funded by a state grant, aiming specifically for $62 million. The deadline for the latest round of grants is early October, but that deadline won’t be met, pushing the issue back for another year.
The earliest Cherokee County could open a new campus to address facilities issues would be 2032 – whatever plan that is.
Yet for the first time in three years, county commissioners have agreed to let the school district begin preliminary planning for its proposed pre-K-8 campus consolidation. Commissioners voted on Sept. 15 to approve funding for a “request for qualifications” for architectural services to plan a new campus facility.
Rumblings from citizens
A group called Citizens for Better Education, with retired Martins Creek principal Paul Wilson as its spokesman, believes the school board’s consolidation plan is too aggressive. It would combine some 1,200 pupils in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade into a single campus modeled after an elementary school in Union County, Ga., that the school board toured over the summer.
The price tag on the Georgia school was $36 million, though it is a smaller building than the one proposed in Cherokee County.
The group also pointed out that the school board has not conducted any feasibility studies or public hearings for its plan, with no possible path to get that done before the October grant deadline. Wilson urged officials to reject the school board’s plan until the background work is completed.
“Most of the affected parents don’t even know about this,” he told the commissioners.
The commissioners’ plan
Pushed by commission Chair Dan Eichenbaum, a majority of the board has been pushing for a new Murphy High in Peachtree that would share facilities with the Schools of Innovation and the old high school campus, including the football field and gym.
Commissioner Ben Adams has been willing to hear the school board’s proposal and has pushed for the commissioners to listen.
Eichenbaum has said local schools are failing to provide competitive educations for Cherokee County’s children. He believes a campus in Peachtree would create an academic environment that would allow children to flourish, whether they seek higher education or a vocational certificate.
The schools’ plan
School board member Steve Coleman and Superintendent Keevin Woody appeared at the commissioners’ Sept. 15 meeting to discuss the situation.
Coleman said the school board has been working on a school consolidation plan for three years and earlier proposed a plan to combine grades 6-12 in the Murphy area. It was that plan that sparked the board of commissioners pushing for a new Murphy High campus that differed from the school board’s plan.
In June, the school board toured a new campus in north Georgia that seemed to check all the boxes – reasonable price in an excellent facility – and approved a plan like it later that day without seeking feedback from anyone outside the board. That plan was approved on a 7-0 vote.
The school board has been trying to get support from the board of commissioners, which acts as a landlord of sorts: it provides the facilities, while the school district does the rest.
As Coleman put it, the commissioners’ approval is needed “simply to allow us to move forward” to get the information needed and complete the grant application.
“We brought you a 7-0 vote months ago,” Coleman said, referring to an earlier plan. As for blame in delaying the process, “100% I lay it on this board,” he said, referring to the commissioners.
The cost for collecting that information is steep – perhaps $200,000 or more.
Coleman said the commissioners complained about too many details in the grades 6-12 school and were now complaining about not enough information for the pre-K-8 school.
He said the school board’s plan would provide education benefits and a morale boost to students, faculty and staff with a campus that is “something worth walking into” with “crazy educational benefits and zero costs to constituents.”
“We gave you exactly what you asked for,” Coleman told the board.
Fixing the problem
Meanwhile, the commissioners’ plan “does nothing to fix the problem” – too many campuses – while asking the state to approve a $62 million grant that accomplishes less than the high school consolidation plan three years ago that received a $50 million grant.
The school board’s plan would close four campuses and open one new one. The commissioners’ plan would close part of the old Murphy High School and build its replacement, resulting in no net change.
Adams has argued that it’s a better education system, not new buildings, that makes children learn. He said some commissioners are trying to indirectly resurrect the high school consolidation plan that failed by one vote (with both the board of education and county commissioners) more than three years ago.
Commissioner Cal Stiles said the school board is headed toward holding public hearings “after the fact” – after decisions have been made and too late to change.
“Why go after the grant and then meet with citizens?” he asked.
Stiles said there are too many variables to consider.
“We don’t have extra money if it doesn’t work,” he said.
Coleman urged the commissioners to “allow us to do our jobs,” referring to the school board. He added that when the commissioners came up with its new Murphy High plan, they didn’t hold any public hearings, either.