Rocky Nimmons/Courier

Students hold a banner in support of their school before a community meeting at A.R. Lewis Elementary School last week.

By Rocky Nimmons
Publisher

rnimmons@thepccourier.com

PICKENS — The people of northern Pickens County came out en masse last week in an effort to halt the closure of three Pickens-area elementary schools.

Rocky Nimmons/Courier

A standing-room-only crowd packed a community meeting at A.R. Lewis Elementary School last week, one of a trio of meetings held at the three Pickens-area elementary schools on the chopping block in a recent school district proposal.

The meetings, held concurrently last Wednesday at A.R. Lewis, Holly Springs and Ambler came just two days after the school board’s facilities committee recommended the closure of the three so-called “mountain schools” and said the full board would vote on the matter one week later.

The vote was later postponed until next Monday’s school board meeting before district spokesman John Eby announced Tuesday afternoon that no action will be taken until after a series of three more workshop meetings with school representatives.

Only weeks earlier the Pickens community was disrupted with news of the possible closure of Ben Hagood Elementary. A “Save Hagood” campaign was started, and many parents and teachers attended a SDPC meeting on Feb. 1. During that meeting, school board chair Judy Edwards informed the crowd that no decision had been made on closures and clearly stated that much study and thought would have to go into any decision to close any school.

The following Monday night, the facilities committee announced that Hagood was safe, but the three mountain schools were not. Seemingly blindsided, the community members who attended the meeting were even more flabbergasted when they heard that the final decision was set to be made in just seven days.

The only board members who seemed against the closure were Alex Saitta and Henry Wilson, who both said they would vote against the “Pickens-area reconfiguration.”

Three meetings were quickly set up at the schools affected to allow public input to be heard by board members before the final vote was taken.

Hundreds of people gathered at each school last Wednesday to hear from officials and to vent some of their frustration toward the elected decisionmakers.

District superintendent Danny Merck told those in attendance at the Holly Springs meeting that talking with teachers at the affected schools was “one of the hardest talks I’ve had to give.”

“What we know is how good of a school that Holly Springs is,” he said at the meeting. “We look academically the last 10 years, the last 15 years, it’s one of the highest performance schools. You’re doing a great job, and so I expressed that to the teachers. I talked to (principal Donna) Harden. So none of is their performance.

“And we know it’s special to the community. We know that you love to see your kids here, and we know how personal it it is.”

Merck, a lifelong Pickens County resident, related his own personal educational experience to those in attendance.

“When I was in the second grade, Cateechee Elementary — and some of you will remember this — Cateechee was closed,” he said. “And I was scared to death, because I had to go Liberty Elementary in the second grade. And I understand what that kind of fear does to a kid, so I’ve asked the teachers to create the same love and affection that my teachers at Cateechee did for me if the school closes.

“So no matter what, we’re still a family in Pickens County, no matter where you go to school. No matter when this is all over, said and done, we’re still a family no matter what happens.

If approved by the full board, the consolidation proposal would combine A.R. Lewis, Holly Springs, Hagood Elementary and Pickens Elementary into a school for K4-second grade at Hagood and a school for third- through fifth-grade classes at Pickens.

In addition, Ambler students would be sent to Dacusville Elementary. The fifth grade at Dacusville Elementary would be moved to Dacusville Middle, so Dacusville Elementary would serve K4 through fourth grades.

“This is the only way to solve the problem in the long run that we can see,” Merck said.

At A.R. Lewis, teachers, employees, former school board members and even a former principal at the school took to the podium to deliver a firm message that the smaller schools in the district are just as important as the bigger ones and deserve to be saved. Most made a point to explain how the moves and closures would disrupt not only the students, but their families and the entire community. Most also made it clear that they would be willing to pay a tax increase if that was what it took to keep their school open.

Assistant superintendent of instructional services Sharon Huff, board member Dr. Brian Swords and executive director of human resource services Stephanie​​ Lackey were on hand at A.R. Lewis.

Lackey first explained the plan and how each school, students and staff would be handled. She informed those in attendance that no jobs would be lost. All employees would keep their jobs.

“Some titles may be changed and some duties might be changed, but all would remain employed,” she said.

The only exception, she said, would be those out on leave or those on one-year contracts.

Swords told the group that as a lifelong educator, closing the schools was the last thing anyone wanted to do. He said the board had been looking for options for the last year.

“We are pinned to a wall. That is basically where we are at,” he said.

Swords said that the district has HVAC systems going bad all over the county.

“We have four high schools that we built at the same time,” he said. “Whether that was the right thing to do or not, I don’t know. We need to look 15-20 years down the road. We need to look at the need. If you do not have a plan, that is going to affect Pickens County. It will hit every one of us hard in the pocketbook.

“It is going to hit all at one time, because we built all those buildings at one time,” Swords added.

Swords also told the crowd that Pickens County was losing its teachers to other counties.

“One of the assistant superintendents in Greenville told me, ‘We appreciate what you guys do in Pickens County. You are the best training program that we have going,’” Swords told the crowd.

Swords explained over five years the savings realized by the reconfiguration would be $11.8 million. He explained that all the schools set to close are running at less than 50 percent capacity. He also showed a graph that said population trends were dropping in the Pickens area. Swords assured the crowd that no decision had been made as to the closing of the schools. It would not be made until a show of hands is taken at the next board meeting.

Kim Clevenger, chair of the A.R. Lewis School Improvement Council, was the first parent to get a chance to voice her opinion at the meeting.

“I am very fond of this wonderful school,” she said. “At our school, our principal and staff have an opportunity to know all our students. I know the school board will decide the fate of our school.

“I am not opposed to a tax increase in order to keep our schools open,” she said to a rousing round of applause.

Former A.R. Lewis principal Kathy Brazinski also addressed the officials.

“One of the major concerns I have initially is the surprise element,” she said. “If this has been in the talking stages for a year and then all of the sudden we are told and in a week’s time a decision is going to be made, that is wrong.

“A.R. Lewis is a small school, but a very nurturing school.

She added that when she started at the school 12 years ago, she was told she was going to “that little mountain school where the kids don’t know much.”

“When I came here, I learned,” she said. “I learned from the children. I learned from the staff and the teachers. They knew a lot more than I did. They knew about life. They taught me about life, and that can’t be done anywhere else but in a small community. We are family.

“If we haven’t had a capital improvement plan at the district, that is a problem, but it is not these children’s problem. Someone needs to bite the bullet and say, ‘We haven’t raised taxes in all these years, but by golly it is time to do the right thing.’”

Former school board member and A.R Lewis student Helen Dodgens was next up, and she said that when she was on the board in the 1990s that they were dealing with the same issues.

“The Easley trustees wanted to close the mountain schools,” Dodgens said. “You can go back and figure out who the superintendent was and who was on the board at that time, but we had enough support to stop it.”

Dodgens brought up spending and asked “Why now?”

“I see we have budgeted for a new teacher training center at the tune of $1.2 million, when the teachers have been training at the new high school auditoriums,” she said.

Lackey responded that the teacher training facility was part of the five-year plan, and it is just a plan and not a reality.

Dodgens then questioned the plan to replace all lighting with LED lighting that a cost of $1.4 million.

“Do you have a study to see how over four years it will save the cost of $1.4 million?” she asked.

She also pointed out that the district had a facility study that cost $60,000. Another expense she questioned was the replacement of turf fields at Liberty and Pickens high schools for $700,000.

“Good old grass is what we played on,” she said. “If we have to replace the turf every so many years this is ridiculous.”

“I am not against a tax increase,” Dodgens said. “I want to keep these three schools open. The thing about it — don’t inflate the budget.”

A steady stream of parents followed and told their stories and asked questions about parking, bus ride times and other logistics, but the one thing they all had in common was that they wanted the board to find another way to make ends meet and keep the schools they loved open.

Since the meeting at the three schools, other community meetings have taken place at the Dacusville Community Center, in front of the Pickens County Courthouse and in Legacy Square in Pickens.

As a result, district officials decided more time is needed. A final vote on the fate of Pickens’ mountain schools will be decided at a scheduled school board meeting next Monday, Feb. 22. That news leaves just one more week for supporters to plead and beg for just one more school board trustee to see the unrest and the passion they have for their schools.