LIBERTY — Faced with cutting more than $725,000 from its projected 2010-11 budget, the Amite County Board of Education voted Monday night to close Gloster Elementary School — pending legal review — at the end of this school year and merge it with Liberty Elementary.
Superintendent of Schools Debbie Hopf recommended closing Gloster, which serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade, and merging the two elementary schools to form Amite County Elementary School in Liberty.
Closing Gloster, she said, would save the district $358,734 annually.
She said she asked board attorney Nate Armistad to make sure there are no pending consent decrees or court orders that would prohibit the closing.
Hopf also recommended eliminating the Junior ROTC program at Amite County High School and the Gloster activity bus, which takes students from Gloster who participate in after-school activities in Liberty back to Gloster.
The vote to close Gloster Elementary was 4-1 with board member Albert White, whose district includes part of Gloster, opposing both closing the school and eliminating the bus.
“I just can’t kill Gloster off,” White said before casting his vote on the school.
Board members Frances Washington, Martha Cook, James Copeland and Jimmie Burns voted for closing Gloster.
Board members voted 5-0 to eliminate the JROTC program.
White said consolidating the elementary schools in Liberty will adversely effect younger students living in the county’s rural areas, who will be forced to get up early to catch school buses.
“I’m thinking of the kids,” he said. “You’re going to have kids getting up at 5:30 in the morning. They’re going to have to ride a school bus 11/2 hours. That’s too much for these kids.
“I cannot put my foot on Gloster,” White said.
White said he didn’t believe the district looked hard enough for other possible cuts before recommending closing Gloster.
Washington said the decision to close the school was not an easy one for her, but it had to be made to keep the school system operating.
“I don’t feel we had a choice,” she said.
Cook told White that the board is not finished making budget cuts.
Closing Gloster, Cook said, was not something she took lightly, either.
“I graduated from Gloster High School,” she said. “But I’m not going to bankrupt the school system.”
The decision to close the school brought a response from Glenn Wilson, spokesman for the Gloster Community Group, an organization that opposes closing the school.
After the meeting, Wilson said the group would appeal the closing to the U. S. Justice Department. He said, however, that the group has not hired an attorney.
He also said the Gloster Community Group, Amite County NAACP and Gloster business owners wrote a letter to Hopf and the board of education opposing closing the school.
In presenting her case to close the elementary school, Hopf said student enrollment at Gloster and Liberty Elementary schools declined over the past 10 years from 1,124 students in the 2000-01 school year to 850 student this year.
She said Mississippi Department of Education officials have told school districts to expect a 15 to 17 percent cut in state funds for the 2010-11 fiscal year, and projects more hard times for the 2011-12 fiscal year.
Hopf said the school district’s proposed 2010-11 budget is based on a 17 percent cut in state funds, and projects a closing 2010 fund balance of $650,000.
“We can’t take another (budget) hit or we’ll be broke,” Hopf said.
She said the school district’s revenue — a combination of Mississippi Adequate Education Program funds from the state, property taxes and federal funds — has declined during the past three years by $540,469, from $8.2 million for the 2007-08 school year to $7.7 million this year.
According to information Hopf provided to the board members, the school district over the past three years has absorbed $1.64 million in increased costs, including utility increases, minimum wage and benefit increases and state-mandated step increases for teachers with 25 to 35 years of experience.
Hopf said the school district borrowed about $1 million from its 16th Section land principal fund and took $964,000 from its fund balance to help pay for repairs and renovations to Liberty Elementary, which was damaged in a March 2009 thunderstorm.
The district also is paying $6,480 a month in rent on temporary classrooms to house Liberty Elementary students from kindergarten to third grade.
Hopf said school officials expect to be reimbursed for about half the total rent on the classrooms from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We don’t expect to get that reimbursement for this (school) year,” she said. “It will probably be for next school year.”
Looking at the proposed savings from closing Gloster, board member Jimmy Burns recalled that the district’s finances had once been under state control. With finances back in the black, Burns said, “I don’t want to see us get wrote up again.” He said he expected to be criticized for his vote to close Gloster, “but I don’t want to put this school district in the red.”
White took exception to eliminating the Gloster activity bus, accusing the board of “throwing kids into the street.”
Hopf said one reason for eliminating the bus was because of complaints from students and parents in other outlying communities asking for their own bus.
“Gloster’s a city with a mayor and businesses,” White said. “You can’t just leave those kids to get home on their own.”
Burns said he did not think Gloster children were more special than students from other areas of the county.
“I’m concerned about all the children in the county,” he said. “I don’t think of one group more than the other.”
Burns said the school district was better off than some others in the state.
“There are some school districts that will be ending the year in red,” he said.
