After losing a third of its student population in the past decade, Walthall County School District officials have decided to close Dexter Attendance Center’s high school, keeping the school open only to kindergarten through sixth grade beginning next school year.
Walthall County Superintendent of Education Cynthia Magee said the closing was due to “numbers and money.”
“You get money from the state according to the numbers you have,” Magee said, referring to per-pupil funding from the Mississippi Department of Education based on students’ average daily attendance.
This past school year, Dexter’s total enrollment was 209, according to the Mississippi Department of Education.
The year before, Dexter had 194 students, and during the 2012-13 school year there were 215.
But there’s been a steep drop in students in the past decade. During the 2003-04 school year, the earliest for which figures are available, Dexter had 311 students.
By the 2008-09 school year, enrollment had fallen to 251, and it’s gone down ever since.
Magee said students in grades 7 through 12 will have the option to attend Tylertown High School or Salem Attendance Center.
As Magee’s first full year as the elected superintendent, this was not an issue she had control over, she said.
“It’s not something I could have prevented,” she said. “Dexter didn’t have the number of students, and that’s why it was made a K through sixth-grade school.”
Magee, who is running for re-election this year, said no one on Dexter’s staff will lose a job as a result of the downsizing. They will likely be sent to work at the district’s other campuses in Tylertown and Salem.
“Nobody lost their jobs — not teachers, teacher assistants, custodians or cafeteria workers,” she said.
Dexter’s principal Allen Dyess voiced his thoughts at last month’s school board meeting, where he made his grievances clear.
According to The Tylertown Times newspaper, Dyess told the board that he believes combining Dexter’s students with those at other schools could mean larger class sizes that would be a detriment to their education.
“I’ve ... never read, heard or known of any professional educator who considered a larger teacher-pupil ratio and larger size classes to be a viable option, or to benefit children in any way,” he said.
Dyess told the board he thought sports such as football and baseball should have been cut and replaced with less expensive activities like track or golf, adding that in the three years he’s been at Dexter the only sport that’s proved worth funding was basketball.
He said he was worried about further financial problems, with parents with both teenagers and younger children being put under strain to send one child to Dexter and another further off.
“It is very likely a number of our students, if required to attend another school in the district next year, will opt to go to a school outside the district, carrying their K through six siblings with them,” Dyess said. “The loss of students attending out of district will mean the per-pupil funding will follow them, leaving the school and district a net loss that may never be recovered.”
Dyess said he understood the choices faced by the superintendent and board members.
“I also would like to thank the community, the board of education and the superintendent for their support during my tenure.”
