ASHLANDA standing-room-only crowd of parents packed a Clay County school board meeting Thursday, anxious to hear about school opening plans after the board's decision this week to leave Bibb Graves High School open one more year.
School opening for the school system, originally set for Aug. 5, will be postponed one week, Superintendent Gene Miller told the crowd.
Bibb Graves will be ready on Aug. 12, Miller said after the meeting. "I'm not going to say it's going to be ideal, but it will be ready."
After he and the board emerged from a 90-minute executive session, Miller told the parents that open enrollment throughout the school system will be suspended for the coming year.
All students must attend the same school they attended last year, Miller said. Kindergarten students will attend the school on their school bus route.
Tuesday, just two weeks before the opening of a new school year, the school board reversed an earlier decision to close Bibb Graves this year. Instead, the school system will close both Bibb Graves and Mellow Valley High School at the end of the coming school year. Both are K-12 schools. Bibb Graves has around 430 students and Mellow Valley around 450.
Because of the arrangements that must be made to implement the decision, the board said all county schools this year will open Aug. 12.
The board will advertise for an interim principal until a permanent one can be found. Twelve openings for teachers will be posted. Bibb Graves students who had planned to move to another Clay County school this year will instead return to Bibb Graves.
Some of the students had joined athletic teams or other extra-curricular activities at Clay County or Lineville high schools over the summer. They nonetheless must return to Bibb Graves, Miller said. He said it is likely baseball and basketball will be available at Bibb Graves as it was last year, but it is possible the resurrected school will be unable to find coaches.
In the past, Clay County students have been able to attend any county school they preferred under a county freedom of choice policy. The school board's mandate this year suspends that freedom. Miller said officials from the U.S. Justice Department had required the measure.
"As of right now," Miller said, "coming from the Justice Department, you go where you went last year, unless you make a physical move."
While many Bibb Graves parents were happy, Some parents expressed doubts that the decisions were in the best interests of their children.
When he heard that Bibb Graves would close, James Gallops registered his 8th grade son for summer football training at Clay County High School.
Now, Gallops has no choice but to send his son back to Bibb Graves. "If (Bibb Graves) is open for just a year, I don't think the kids will get a fair shake," he said. He said he is concerned about the availability of athletics programs and the ability to find a principal and teachers who will work for a 10- month contract.
Gallops said his son would prefer to attend Clay County High School. "He's gotten used to the kids he's been with for the summer," Gallops said. "He doesn't want to go back for just 10 months."
Half of the parents fanning themselves with the board's printed agendas in the hot county courthouse were breathing a sigh of relief that Bibb Graves would remain open.
"I'm elated about Bibb Graves being back," said Jerry Culp, who has a son in second grade. "The only thing is that it's not permanent."
"I feel wonderful about it," said Dana Miller, who has a daughter in fourth grade at Bibb Graves. Miller was looking into private and home-schooling after she heard Bibb Graves would close.
But it is likely that Bibb Graves will not stay open past its ten-month reprieve.
The decision to close the school initially was made because of the board's $400,000 debt this year and the county's steady decline in students, the superintendent said. The decision to keep the school open another year only came after a U.S. Justice Department inquiry into the county's compliance with desegregation laws.
After finding that Mellow Valley, with a student body almost 98 percent white, has not had a single minority student graduate in 30 years, Justice Department officials told the board that if a school was to close, Mellow Valley would have to be first.
"We felt like in the next three to six years, if enrollment keeps dropping, then we have to close a second school anyway," Miller said. So the board decided to close both Bibb Graves and Mellow Valley, but wait a year to do it. Closing both schools will cut costs and help keep the school system's budget in the black, he said.
Miller said when the decision was made to close Bibb Graves the board was unaware that the county school system was not meeting desegregation requirements. "If we had known back then, we would have closed Mellow Valley instead," Miller said.
While many Bibb Graves parents at the meeting said they are glad their youngsters will not have to change schools this year, Mellow Valley parents at the meeting were not so pleased.
Parents said they were surprised to learn of both the school system's financial and desegregation problems. Parents of children at Mellow Valley who attended the school board meeting said there is no racial issue at that school and that closing it is no solution.
"We're being punished for something we have no control over," said Mike Elder, who has 10th and 7th grade children at Mellow Valley.
"We didn't realize we had a racial problem; we still don't think we do."
Elder, a member of the Parents and Teachers Organization at Mellow Valley, said the PTO would discuss "how to raise money for a lawyer to fight the Justice Department."
