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Anniston school consolidation ideas ready for public

Friday, February 10, 2012

After a second work session that was filled with detailed numbers, the Anniston Board of Education is ready to schedule public meetings to discuss the system’s need to reallocate space among its school buildings.

Ideas kicked around Thursday include returning sixth-graders to elementary schools and making Cobb Elementary a junior high school.

Superintendent Joan Frazier said that by the board’s next meeting on Thursday, Feb. 16, she would have a list of dates for public meetings at all city schools.

“What we may want to do is piggyback on an existing meeting like a PTO meeting or something of that nature,” Frazier said.

The board spent more than an hour discussing options, all of which assumed the closing of Anniston Middle School.

“What I’ve tried to do…is try to respond with some concrete data that relates to several different possibilities,” Frazier said.

She did stress, though, that she wasn’t making any recommendations about what those possibilities may be.

Frazier presented the board members with numerous details about the potential costs and savings that could be realized by closing Anniston Middle School. Doing so would save the system $132,000 in utility costs and, with the elimination of several bus routes, at least $10,000 in transportation costs, she said. The system would also save some money by eliminating some of the school cafeteria workers, Frazier said.

However, board member Bill Robison pointed out, not all that money would actually be savings.

For instance, if the students move to another school, a certain percentage of the utility expenses would move to those schools with them, Robison said.

The school cafeteria money would be savings, he added, but it would have to be spent on the school food program.

“If we saved money in operating expenses for instance, then that would be more money that could be spent within the Child Nutrition Program sphere to update equipment,” Robison said.

Of course, if the middle school closed, the system would have to make room for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders somewhere else.

For example, Frazier told board members, if the system moved sixth-graders to the city’s five elementary schools, the high school campus has enough room to build a junior high wing. A very rough estimate of the cost of that addition would be $8 million, she said.

If the system had only four elementary schools, each containing kindergarten through sixth grades, it could transform Cobb Elementary, the most centrally located building, into a junior high, Frazier said.

“Saying that we have 350 seventh- and eighth-graders…we would need about 49,000 square feet to service those students,” Frazier said. “We have about 42,000 square feet there right now.”

The system would have to add about 7,000 square feet to the building, including enlarging the cafeteria as well as adding a regulation gymnasium and labs, she said. Frazier didn’t have an estimated cost for enlarging Cobb school.

In either case, the school system would be able to create a central office on the grounds of the high school in the Adult Vocational Rehab Services building at the corner of 11th Street and Woodstock. The school system owns that building, which has been empty since late 2011 with the departure of the Alabama Department of Vocational Rehab Services.

As board members left, they did ask for some more information from Frazier.

Robison wanted to know what, if any laws, govern the sale of Board of Education property. Board members Arthur Cottingham and Mary Harrington said they’d like to get a better idea of where all students live so that the board could see where changes might be carried out most effectively.

Harrington also wanted the board to consider making room for a magnet school. Board members Hutchings and Robison asked for an estimate of what the middle school is currently worth; Frazier said the property is insured for $27 million, but no potential sale price was noted.

“You don’t want to give it away,” Hutchings said.

The board’s next meeting is scheduled for Thursday.

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