Legislative Consolidation of schools:

[Rebel Bert]

The legislative committee met Thursday with discussion of consolidation of districts or schools due to lower enrollment.  Their target is 27 known schools under 1,000 students in PreK thru 12th grades. An additional 7 schools just over 1,000 students. All i can say is good by Mt Olive among others. Anyone have names of those 34? It's obvious this will force MHSAA to go back to 5 or 6 classes? Or start recruiting schools!!

[Rebel Bert]

That leaves 203 schools:

6 Classes  5 Classes

6A 24.              XX

5A 24.              32

4A 32.              32

3A 32.              40

2A 40.              48

1A 51.              51

[pancho]

I hope they are able to go through with this. I think the elected officials have good intentions of saving wasted salary etc. The Starkville area is very much a better deal now.  I am not so sure our unelected bureaucrat super of Education shares the same views.

[MSSportsGuy]

16 hours ago, Rebel Bert said:

The legislative committee met Thursday with discussion of consolidation of districts or schools due to lower enrollment.  Their target is 27 known schools under 1,000 students in PreK thru 12th grades. An additional 7 schools just over 1,000 students. 

there are more than 27 schools with under 1000 students preK to 12 but maybe there are that many districts.  Hopefully district consolidation will actually come to fruition in some places where it would benefit the county and the students.

 

the state has stayed out of individual school consolidations, letting the district boards make that decision.

 

I predict little will come from this besides maybe a couple of small districts with proven challenges will merge. And of course the association should go back to even 5 classes at this point but won’t. 

[Merlin]

Out of those 27 schools I bet there’s 20 different districts.  Cutting that by half or 2/3 would for sure save the state some payroll funds. 

[Chunky6617]

The question is what schools consolidate with who? Seminary ain’t gonna allow consolidation with mount olive and collins. So mount olive would just have to consolidate with collins alone. Taylorsville eventually is going to have to consolidate with somebody but I think that’s still several years away. Once you allow a school to go down it’s almost impossible to save it. And Tville went down super fast, almost like it was overnight. Now nobody wants to move into the town because they don’t want their kids to go to school there. 

[Rebel Bert]

5 hours ago, Chunky6617 said:

The question is what schools consolidate with who? Seminary ain’t gonna allow consolidation with mount olive and collins. So mount olive would just have to consolidate with collins alone. Taylorsville eventually is going to have to consolidate with somebody but I think that’s still several years away. Once you allow a school to go down it’s almost impossible to save it. And Tville went down super fast, almost like it was overnight. Now nobody wants to move into the town because they don’t want their kids to go to school there. 

Mize is around 850 PK-12 if I am reading correctly  according to US News and World Report. I am having trouble pulling up MDE numbers. My guess is you close Taylorsville High and split the students mostly to Mize to put Mize over the 1000 mark. 

[Rebel Bert]

6 hours ago, Chunky6617 said:

The question is what schools consolidate with who? Seminary ain’t gonna allow consolidation with mount olive and collins. So mount olive would just have to consolidate with collins alone. Taylorsville eventually is going to have to consolidate with somebody but I think that’s still several years away. Once you allow a school to go down it’s almost impossible to save it. And Tville went down super fast, almost like it was overnight. Now nobody wants to move into the town because they don’t want their kids to go to school there. 

Honestly Mize will probably draw some of the Mt Olive students who moved into the area as a means to avoid Collins. I do believe closing Taylorsville will be a last resort by Smith County to even discuss the closure of schools. Raleigh was only built for 750 students. If both high schools moved to Raleigh a new Junior high wing will have to be built or move it back to the elementary. Then keep Mize and Taylorsville  at PreK thru 8th.

[Chunky6617]

Smith county will never consolidate all 3 schools, and they shouldn’t. There is no reason to. Mize is one of the best schools in the entire state, and Raleigh also is one of the better schools. They aren’t struggling academically and don’t have any behavioral issues whatsoever. Taylorsville is the only school that’s struggling. They actually have shown a lot of improvement the last couple of years compared to where they were a few years ago, but again once those parents move out and no new parents move in, it’s hard to get a school back to where it once was. It’s almost impossible. Unless new parents start moving into Tville, the school isn’t going to improve enough. And nobody is trying to move their kids into the school. If anything, more and more parents are trying to get them into mize or Sylva bay.