The bill to consolidate the Greenwood and Leflore County school districts came up only briefly during Thursday’s Greenwood School Board meeting.
Still, it was clearly on the minds of many in the room.
Board member George Ellis expressed frustration with an amendment added to the bill by Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, shortly before the bill was passed by the Mississippi Senate Wednesday.
That amendment would require any of the current city board members wishing to serve on the consolidated district board to run for election.
According to Ellis, Senate Education Committee Chairman Gray Tollison had already made nearly all of the changes the Greenwood district wanted when the Oxford Republican introduced his bill on the Senate floor.
Tollison’s version would have allowed the city to control the consolidated district by giving the Greenwood Mayor and City Council the power to appoint three of the five school board members.
The remaining two members, under Tollison’s version of the bill, would have been elected by Leflore County residents living outside the Greenwood corporate limits.
Jordan’s amendment calls for all five members of the consolidated Greenwood Leflore District to be elected from countywide districts ahead of the merger, now set for July 1, 2016.
“I’m telling you, that’s just a slap in the face,” Ellis said.
Jordan said he amended the bill because he felt all school board members should be directly elected.
The Greenwood board has been pushing for provisions that would allow them to continue running the merged district, at least initially.
That’s the model being used in the merger of the Starkville and Oktibbeha County school systems.
Under a 2013 law dictating that merger, the Starkville School Board and superintendent will continue serving in the consolidated district after the merger takes effect on July 1, 2015.
Starkville School Board members will be replaced by countywide elections as their terms expire.
Greenwood Superintendent Montrell Greene said Thursday the Starkville-Oktibbeha law was a good model for Greenwood, because the situation there — where the Starkville city district is being merged with a surrounding county district under state takeover — “closely mirrors our situation.”
The Greenwood board has hired a lobbyist, former Democratic state Sen. Bob Dearing of Natchez, to lobby for changes to the bill on the district’s behalf.
Also Thursday:
nGreene said the district has not yet decided when to make up the two school days lost this week when the district closed due to wintry weather.
“We want to keep the entire spring break; I’m sure the students do, and all the teachers,” Greene said. “We’re going to see if we can do that.”
Greene added that the district was able to use its new mass-messaging system, called Blackboard Connect, to inform parents and staff of the school closings.
The superintendent added that the district’s Facebook page was kept regularly updated, and each weather-related posting received more than 1,000 views.
nGreene also said the district met with teachers who arrived at the district through Teach for America to discuss their impressions of the district. He said the district would also be looking for ways to retain more TFA teachers past their two-year teaching commitments.
“It’s hard to find good, qualified teachers,” he said.
He noted that a number of teachers do choose to stay longer, including Alicia Morse, a former TFA member now in her fourth year teaching at Greenwood Middle School.
“We have others that are considering staying longer, and that’s a wonderful testament to people enjoying Greenwood and enjoying helping our students and becoming part of our community,” Greene said.
