CARROLLTON — Carroll County Board of Supervisors President Rickie Corley was to lead a delegation to the state Capitol in Jackson today to protest the proposed consolidation of the county’s school district with the Winona and Montgomery County districts.
Corley and supervisors Terry Brown and Claude Fluker were to join school board member Donnie Wiltshire and Superintendent of Schools Billy Joe Ferguson for a meeting with members of the House Education Committee. Ferguson said he was not sure whether the group would meet with the entire committee or a few members.
The Senate approved the merger on March 2 as part of Senate Bill 2495. The Education Committee is now debating the Senate bill. If it passes out of committee, it will be debated and voted on by the full House membership.
If it passes the House, the bill will be debated with members of both houses in conference before being sent for Gov. Phil Bryant’s signature.
Corley said Wednesday that he wants the opportunity to speak for Carroll County.
“I’m hard against it (consolidation). It’s not just county pride. It’s sensible,” Corley said. “I’m passionate about it. I’m speaking for the board. We’ve sent a resolution against it.”
Corley said he can understand combining Montgomery with Winona, since Montgomery County has about 237 students. “We want them to take Carroll out of it. We’ve already done our part when we consolidated Vaiden and Carrollton in the ’90s. We’ve already got kids riding too far on a bus.”
Ferguson said he wants the opportunity to speak up: “We’ve got to go to them and tell them what we need.”
“When the superintendents met with Sen. Lydia Chassaniol (R-Winona) two weeks ago, she said it was a done deal. That’s not democracy,” Ferguson said.
Chassaniol has said she favors consolidation and “wants to do something great for education.”
She wrote in an email, “While I acknowledge the fact that there are many opinions regarding the matter of school consolidation, it is my hope that cooler heads will prevail until all of the facts are known. This is a time for mature judgment, careful consideration, and exemplary behavior by both school officials and the citizens who are affected by the consolidation legislation.”
Chassaniol said she has received a commitment from Selim Bassoul, CEO of the Middleby Corp., the parent company of Viking Range, to donate and raise funds to help build a new high school if the merger is approved.
Attempts by the Commonwealth to reach Bassoul to ask about that commitment have been unsuccessful.
Reps. Karl Oliver, R-Winona, and Kevin Horan, D-Grenada, have both expressed opposition to the consolidation effort.
Carroll County supervisors joined the school board and a large crowd of citizens in the J.Z. George High School gymnasium in North Carrollton on Monday morning for a rally against the proposed consolidation. The event featured a mock funeral for the Carroll district, complete with a closed casket.
“I want everyone to see the visible effects if this bill passes,” Ferguson told the audience.
A George band student played “Taps” on a trumpet. Participants mourned the potential loss of George’s athletic teams and long traditions, Carroll County’s elected school board and superintendent, and the county’s only high school.
Ferguson predicted that the consolidated district’s new high school would be located in Montgomery County.
“A cost of a new school would be at least $25 million,” Ferguson said. “Get ready to start saving money now to pay your taxes later.”
Should the bill pass, it will mandate administrative consolidation beginning July 1 with the Mississippi Board of Education appointing an interim trustee to manage the consolidation. The new district will begin operation on July 1, 2017.
Under the bill, a new school board would be elected in five districts established by the Mississippi Board of Education. That board would hire a new superintendent for the district, which will be headquartered in Winona.
Dr. Teresa Jackson, superintendent of schools in Winona, said she and the Winona board were also surprised by the inclusion of Carroll County to the consolidation bill.
“I had no prior knowledge,” Jackson said.
She said Winona schools’ leaders “aren’t fighting for or against this. Even if only Winona and Montgomery County are consolidated, both districts will have plenty of details to hammer out.
“It’s going to be a monumental undertaking,” she said. “And the bill is only an administrative consolidation. The only incentive is if there could be a state-of-the-art high school built for all the children in the community to enjoy.”
Nothing in the bill says any school buildings have to be abandoned, unless they are administrative and no longer needed.
