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. 

[Rebel Bert]

3 hours ago, Chunky6617 said:

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. 

Their trying to come to Raleigh too. Just tells me there a problems.

[Merlin]

On 6/6/2026 at 2:50 PM, 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. 

Taylorsvilles downfall may have been somewhat orchestrated from within its own district. 

[Chunky6617]

1 hour ago, Merlin said:

Taylorsvilles downfall may have been somewhat orchestrated from within its own district. 

Possibly. They made a lot of really bad hires in administration for a few years and that’s set them way back. You can’t lose your school. Once the school goes, the town eventually goes too. And it’s almost impossible to ever restore it

[TheAnswer]

If they really want to save money, put a cap on the ridiculous amount of money that superintendents make.

[pancho]

5 minutes ago, TheAnswer said:

If they really want to save money, put a cap on the ridiculous amount of money that superintendents make.

and that state super is grossly overpaid

[Rebel Bert]

I am going to say there are more than 34 schools at are around 1,000 students. Mt Olive people will fight it all the way until building crumbles. You can’t blame them. I wonder if the legislature is doing this to scare a few more school districts  to consolidate. 

[Rebel Bert]

I can honestly say I counted 36 schools right at or below 1,000 students. I got to the end of middle of the alphabet let's say M. I skipped down and got Smith Counties numbers PK to 12 th grades. I think many of those districts that the committee is looking at have to be under performing or multiple underperformed per county such as East and West Jasper. 2 Districts with all 3 schools under 1,000 students. Bay Springs 791, Heidelberg 713, Stringer 592. All 4 of Lincoln County schools are under 1,000 but are good performing schools ranging from 727 down to 630. Wesson has 810 but would you force CopiahvCounty Schools to consolidate with Hazlehurst City Schools.  I really do think they are going after some of the Delta Counties amounting to about 25 to 30%. Then a few in the NE. Smith County may be on the list since Raleigh has 1128, Mize 808, and Taylorsville 514. We will wait and see how the bill is written.  At some point you need to downsize state government as well.

[MSSportsGuy]

7 hours ago, Rebel Bert said:

I can honestly say I counted 36 schools right at or below 1,000 students. I got to the end of middle of the alphabet let's say M. 

 

On 6/5/2026 at 7:13 PM, Rebel Bert said:

 Their target is 27 known schools under 1,000 students in PreK thru 12th grades. 

Yeah there are way more than 27 or 36 schools with under 1,000 students in PreK to Grade 12. I think that 27 number could be the districts with less than 1000 students.

 

I still maintain I will be surprised if there are more than a handful of districts that are consolidated. A House Committee can say and think all they want but getting the House, Senate, and governor to approve bills that target individual schools in tiny communities seems beyond their concerns. 

 

16 hours ago, pancho said:

and that state super is grossly overpaid

We call agree with this but the law states currently the MDE Superintendent must make 90% of what the IHL commissioner makes. There is a bill filed each year to overturn this law but it never makes it out of committee. This has been the law for many years so it's not usually tied to the person sitting in the chair at MDE.

 

16 hours ago, TheAnswer said:

If they really want to save money, put a cap on the ridiculous amount of money that superintendents make.

This times 1,000. There is a statewide teacher pay scale based on years of experience and degrees earned. There is no such scale for superintendents. Some of them are grossly overpaid for the total number of students served as well as district complexity. This should be reined in even if districts don't ultimately consolidated.