Date of final vote unclear

By Rocky Nimmons
Publisher

rnimmons@thepccourier.com

PICKENS — The date and time for a vote to decide the fate of three Pickens-area elementary schools is up in the air.

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Pickens County School Board members were told during a meeting Monday night that a vote will be taken at a meeting next Monday, March 14. However, School District of Pickens County spokesman John Eby said Tuesday the vote will not take place until a later, undetermined date.

Facilities committee chairman Phillip Bowers on Monday gave fellow board members an update on progress made in meetings with stakeholders from Ambler, A.R. Lewis and Holly Springs elementary schools in light of the proposed closure of the three schools.

Bowers said “the working group met on Feb. 23 and started with an overview of the stakeholders study that was done in 2014 that kind of started the whole ball rolling about the efficiencies.”

He added that the group reviewed the suggestions from the input sessions that were held on Feb. 10 and said there had been about seven or eight of them.

He said that in the community input meeting, the issue of tax options came up, and the working group took that to study and returned their information last week.

According to Bowers, stakeholders suggested that the district put off the decision until after this year’s elections.

“We did not put a subcommittee on that, because that is something that boards don’t have to evaluate,” he said.

Bowers told the board there was a suggestion to evaluate budget cuts in other areas. That was taken into study and was reported back. There was discussion about various approaches to the merger, including closing three schools and possibly merging two, and another group worked on that.

Bowers said the last meeting was scheduled to be held on Tuesday night, and he would get more information once the meeting takes place.

“There was some discussion about charter school options,” he said.

Bowers said a representative from the Charter School Alliance was planning to attend the Tuesday night meeting.

Bowers added that a couple of options were taken off the list — one being a phased-in approach to the merger, and the other being redrawing attendance lines because he said, “that was of no interest to the committee.”

According to Bowers and school board chair Judy Edwards, the working timetable would include a meeting of the facilities committee later this week so it could bring a recommendation to the board on March 14.

Board member Alex Saitta questioned Edwards if a vote would be taken at the March 14 meeting, and she said yes.

“When (Bowers) was setting up these meetings, that was the timeline that was set up,” Edwards said.

“So a week from today, we will make a decision on whether these schools would be closed?” Saitta asked once more.

Edwards replied, “Yes, a week from today.”

Bowers then chimed in.

“Somehow that March 14 date got in the newspaper, so I don’t think we should change that,” he said. “It would suit me to move it to the following week, but it has already been published.”

Edwards then confirmed once again that on March 14 a recommendation and the vote would come from the facilities committee.

On Tuesday morning, however, Eby responded to a question about the facilities committee’s planned meeting later this week by contradicting Edwards’ statement from Monday’s meeting.

“The March 14 meeting is supposed to be the recommendation meeting,” he said via email. “The actual vote would be sometime later — the date for it has not been set.”

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