From the response by a room full of Spring Hill Elementary and Sarah Harp Minter Elementary parents and the faculty of East Fayette Elementary, it appeared that a decision by the Fayette County School Board Feb. 13 night to go with the three-way plan proposed recently by the community was a match made in heaven.

The unanimous vote will move East Fayette Elementary to the new Inman Road Elementary for the 2008-2009 school year, keep Spring Hill Elementary intact as it exists today and keep Minter Elementary intact with the exception of 40 students whose small geographic area had to be drawn into the East Fayette district, but who can still attend Minter until they graduate under a special permission provision. Parents of the 40 students would be required to provide transportation if they opted to obtain the special permission for their children to complete their studies at Minter. The motion included re-purposing East Fayette for a future use yet to be determined. Also in the motion, the board agreed that as many East Fayette employees as possible, and potentially all of them, should be a part of the move to Inman depending on how the enrollment numbers match with staffing.

Referencing the 40 students at Minter, Superintendent John DeCotis said Inman does not currently sit in the East Fayette district. In order to include it geographically in the East Fayette district requires taking a small amount of area from Minter. The area is roughly east of both Ga. Highway 92 and Inman Road, north of Hillsbridge Road and south of Morgan Road. DeCotis and board members reiterated that parents could request and obtain special permission for their children to continue to attend Minter through graduation.

None of the three schools would be at capacity with the adopted motion, Assistant Superintendent of Operations San Sweat said during the board discussion. In comments earlier, DeCotis said the under-capacity status is expected to continue for the next several years. He said the school system is now experiencing its first decrease in student enrollment for the first time in three decades.

“According to our usage, in five years we are still going to have 90 empty units in the county at the elementary schools,” DeCotis said. “When you’re proactive and you’re trying to build schools to keep up with the growth and then the growth slows down, you’re stuck with extra classrooms.”

Board member Janet Smola said during the discussion that the board routed the re-purposing issue to be in compliance with state guidelines.

“The reason we didn’t do this back in December is because there is a right way to do things and then there is the quick way to do things,” she said. “And in order for this to be time-tested and true it was important for us to do it the right way. And that was to follow the state’s guidelines on how to close or re-purpose a school. One of the various important things is to engage in public comments so that you can get the opinion of everyone in the community. And I think one thing that is incredibly remarkable over these two nights is that we had one person with opposition. I feel like if the community didn’t approve of us re-purposing they would have been here, and they’re not. I perceive this as permission from our community to his board to proceed with the re-purposing of this school.”

Board member Lee Wright agreed, saying that all taxpayers, not only those from the three schools, would reap the benefit of the re-purposing.

The board’s motion and vote mirrored the sentiments of nearly all the more than 60 speakers that spoke at the board’s Feb. 11 and 13 public hearings on the re-purposing of East Fayette. Parents and faculty from all three schools had advocated for part or all of what had been called the three-way plan that had surfaced recently by Spring Hill PTO President Tom VanHoozer. The board’s motion included essentially the same components as those referenced in the three-way plan.

After the Wednesday meeting VanHoozer affirmed the applause that broke out after the vote. He said students from the three schools were the real winners while noting the negative comments from some bloggers.

“The whole situation was great. Overwhelming public opinion came about and 900 students were basically not shifted from their current situation,” VanHoozer said. “There were some negatives, mainly from the bloggers. I think blogging is great, but public opinion comes out better, though. I’m glad that the board members unanimously voted for this. It’s not just a group of people who wanted this. It was 900 students.”

Almost every speaker during both public hearings asked the board either to consider moving the entire faculty and student body from East Fayette to the new Inman Road school or to adopt the three-way plan that would accomplish that objective and would, additionally, keep Minter and Spring Hill in place as they currently exist. That overwhelming public support at the hearings for one or more components of the three-way plan was addressed by Smola during the Wednesday meeting, saying the unity of purpose that resulted in the board’s vote exemplified the positions of almost every one of the speakers during the public hearings.

And though the mass of public comment favored the board’s decision, there were a few with differing opinions. One suggested that the board not rush to re-purpose, citing the future need for additional classroom space beyond what is currently planned, while another said that some of the comments at the public hearings, while not racial, sounded like bigotry.

Until late January, East Fayette had been considered for closure in the 2009-2010 school year. DeCotis said Jan. 28 that the system’s facilities plan showed a surplus of elementary units and that the state will again be cutting funding for education. He said at the time that closing East Fayette a year early could save the system between $644,000 and $800,000 in staffing costs, since the administration at East Fayette would move to the new Inman Elementary. Inman is scheduled to open in 2008-2009 school year with Rivers Elementary opening a year later. Voters in 2004 passed a $54 million bond issue to build two new elementary schools.

Elaborating Feb. 13 on the considerations for re-purposing East Fayette, DeCotis said core staff costs at a new elementary school would be approximately $1.018 million, with the county receiving approximately $194,000 of state funding to offset the expense. He said the state Austerity Reduction program has totaled nearly $20 million in the past six years. That resulted in the school system not being able to grow its fund balance sufficiently to cover monthly cash flow and necessitated having to borrow funds each fall until tax revenue is received. The fund balance at the end of FY 2007 was approximately $6.5 million, or 3.4 percent of the FY 2008 budget. Next year’s budget will include step increases for existing teachers of approximately $1.4 million with an additional $3 million under the governor’s recommendation of a 2.5 percent pay increase for teachers.

DeCotis said the school system anticipates very minimal growth or no growth in the property tax digest next year, adding that the 2009 Austerity Reduction is expected to be approximately $2 million. He said current year state revenue was reduced $326,260 for special education students electing private schooling under Senate Bill 10.

After the meeting, Assistant Superintendent for Operations Sam Sweat spoke about the lengthy committee process with a paid consultant, the public hearings and the board’s vote.

“The committee process was long and tough and painful, like anytime you’re dealing with elementary school boundaries,” he said. “Having a consultant from the outside sometimes dictating what to do created some problems, but he was a proponent of forming the committee structure and it did help us project into the future by using representatives from every school. One of the things that came out of the committees was the idea of closing East Fayette. Was it worth the $40,000 for a consultant? I don’t know. But if we save $1 million from closing East Fayette it’s worth it.”

Sweat added that the proposal of the three-way plan presented at the public hearings, the near total support from the community and the upcoming funding realities provided school board members with a solution that should work well and satisfy nearly everyone. And into the future, perhaps in as little as four years from now when middle and high school boundaries might have to be addressed, Sweat said it is currently unknown what process might be used to establish those boundaries.

“It’s a real good question. No matter how we do it, I think we just saw that the input from the public was extremely beneficial and I think we will need community input,” he said.

As one of the state’s continuously highest rated school systems, Fayette employs many more staff positions than is accounted for through state funding. Fayette employs 1,708 teachers, though 314 of those positions are 100 percent locally funded. The school system employs 355 paraprofessionals. The state funds 71 of those positions and at an amount less than the starting salary. The system employs 60 counselors. The state funds 45.82 counselor positions.

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