Marble – Cherokee County Board of Education members are setting up a showdown with county commissioners over how best to deal with an aging, overabundant inventory of school campuses.
The school board met May 13 at Central Office for a facilities work session, when they evaluated results of an artificial intelligence-driven analysis of several facilities plans. The plans included those proposed by school board members Steve Coleman, Jason Murphy and Jeff Tatham.
The financials point to one solution, and it’s not the one favored by county commissioners that would build a new Murphy High School beside the Schools of Innovation and Tri-County Community College in Peachtree.
 |
The school board looked at four facility plans including one somewhat similar to the commissioners’ preferred plan. Of the four, just one looks financially feasible: A consolidated Murphy Elementary School that would combined Martins Creek, Murphy and Peachtree schools into a 900-student, 96,700-square-foot facility on 18-20 acres.
That plan would cost $50.7 million based on current costs – less than half the cost of the plan most similar to the commissioners’ plan. Of the four plans evaluated at the May 13 meeting, a consolidated Murphy Elementary School would result in a $22.5 million funding surplus.
A new Murphy High School would cost $115.2 million and have a funding gap of $30.1 million, according to the study.
The remaining two plans would result in funding shortfalls of between $39 million (for a pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school that would consolidate Murphy Middle and Murphy, Peachtree and Martins Creek elementary schools) and $59.2 million (for a Murphy grades 6-12 consolidated school that county commissioners have already rejected).
The board of education is expected to vote on its preferred plan at its next meeting Thursday, June 5, and forward its recommendation to the board of commissioners – possibly in time for its meeting Monday, June 16.
Cherokee County Schools has 12 campuses – including three high schools, an early college, a continuation school, three middle schools and five elementary schools. The early college and continuation school share the same campus at the Schools of Innovation.
In late 2022, county commissioners rejected a local match required to obtain a grant that would have paid much of the cost of building a single consolidated high school to serve the entire county.
Since that time, school board members have been trying to find a more palatable solution that would reduce the number of campuses and save money. The clock is ticking, because the school district will run out of the extra money it needs to maintain campuses at current levels in about two years.
Meanwhile, county commissioners gave the school district permission to spend up to $15,000 for an engineering evaluation of 99 acres of rugged property the school district owns near Murphy High. School board members want to know whether the acreage should be developed into a new school or sold as surplus.