Could this ‘concerning’ northern Beaufort County trend lead to school closures?
While schools in Beaufort County’s high-growth areas are looking for ways to cope with overcrowding, those in another area are experiencing a contrasting, but equally as concerning problem — dwindling student populations and vacant classrooms.
The total student population for schools in southern Beaufort County has increased by nearly 25 percent over the past five years, according to the district’s annual capitol budgets.
During that same time period, the number of students attending schools north of the Broad River has declined by 7 percent, estimates show.
The district’s ideal capacity for a school is 85 percent, according to Robert Oetting, the district’s chief operations officer. Yet 12 of the 16 schools north of the Broad River are below 70 percent capacity — and most of those are expected to decline even further over the next five years.
Beaufort County School District administrators called the declining student population trend “concerning” in the December update of the district’s 2020-29 Ten-Year Plan and Capital Budget.
“If the trend continues it will be brought to the Board (of Education) for consideration,” the district’s ten-year plan said. “... Where growth is stagnant or in decline, BCSD will need to modernize older buildings, close unused buildings, and develop mechanisms to address population decline.”
When a school reaches a capacity of 50 percent or below, the Beaufort County Board of Education previously had a policy to start considering consolidation.
Two Beaufort County schools — St. Helena Elementary and Lady’s Island Middle — are at that mark and district forecasts show further declines in the coming years at the two facilities.
Lady’s Island Middle School, which can hold up to 1,088 students, is only at 49 percent capacity. If the district added the 226 students who attend Lady’s Island Elementary School to the middle school two miles away — transforming it into a K-8 school — its capacity would still remain below 70 percent capacity, according to district data.
Rich Bisi, founder for the local education organization CARE, said consolidating schools would be an effective way for the school board to responsibly deal with the declining numbers.
Bisi would like to see the district use money saved from closing schools and forgoing the maintenance on those buildings to be put toward increasing compensation for teachers.
“I think there are numerous schools that consolidation would not hurt,” Bisi said in a recent interview. “If anything, it would help the kids and teachers salaries and follow what the school district says itself in its 10-year plan.”
A community committee tasked with reviewing projects for the referendum may recommend that the school board forms a separate committee to look into possible consolidation in the future, Oetting said.
The idea of consolidation, though, has only been mentioned “briefly in passing” at the committee meetings and would likely not play a role in the upcoming referendum, which is planned for November.
At that point, a consolidation study would take at least 8 to 12 months, he said.
Closing schools — whether in Beaufort County and in any county in the county for that matter — is almost always a contentious topic met with blow-back from community members and educators.
A 2008 University of Dayton studied examining the pros and cons of school consolidation found a wide array of benefits to consolidation including additional extracurricular offerings for students, increased student diversity and social stimulation, elevated expertise and experience shared between teachers and faculty and cost savings by decreasing the number of taxpayer dollars spent on facility maintenance and upgrades.
Despite the benefits, consolidation has also proven to have negative effects on students.
A 2000 study by the Rural School and Community Trust, which examined test results from thousands of schools in Georgia, Ohio, Montana, and Texas, found that as schools grew, the negative effects of poverty on student achievement increased. Based on the results, the researchers concluded that the more impoverished a student body is, the smaller the school should be in order to maximize student performance and growth.
Lessons learned from Shell Point closure
If the district does consider future school consolidation in northern Beaufort County, it would not be the first time.
In 2011, the school board spent months debating the closure of one of at least four schools and in the end, decided to close Shell Point Elementary in 2012.
District administrators, citizens and board members considered the school’s capacity, growth potential, building age and condition, distance to other public schools, number of students affected and the marketability of the property for sale or lease.
At that time, the district estimated that the closure of Shell Point Elementary would save the district up to $890,000 the following school year, according to reports by The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette.
But the decision to close Shell Point — just narrowly passed with a 6-5 split vote — faced great opposition from both board members and community members. While some board and community members at that time viewed the closure as a financial necessity, opponents called the decision short-sighted and unjustified, touting the school’s success.
“This is not what any of us want to do, but this is reality,” then-board member Julie Bell said during a 2011 meeting. “We have to make decisions that can benefit all 20,000 kids, not just 500 of them.”
Oetting, the district’s chief operations officer, offered similar sentiments when talking about the potential for consolidation in the coming years.
“The most painful thing you can do to a community is close a school,” Oetting said. “It is not something you look at lightly.”
This story was originally published March 7, 2019 at 2:56 PM.
