The Shadow
Covington officials want a merger between the Alleghany County and city school systems to happen without closing any city schools.
Covington School Board Chairman Rick Fuhrman made it clear Monday night during the board’s regular October meeting that he, and city officials, do not want Covington High School closed.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here, but the feeling that I get from our government officials is that they do not want to close any schools in the city of Covington,” Fuhrman said. “This would have to be in the agreement because if you didn’t, three years down the road, a new school board could come in and say, ‘We’re closing a school.’”
The discussion began as Fuhrman, Vice Chairwoman Cindy Bennett and Super-intendent Tom Long reported on a meeting they had with their Alleghany County counterparts designed to identify the starting points for discussions about merging the two school systems.
“If they come back and say, ‘We’re going to have one high school,’ then where do we go from there?” Fuhrman asked.
Board member Ron Morrissette openly questioned why facilities are being given such a high priority in the talks.
“I thought this was about the kids, that this whole set up was for the kids,” said Morrissette. “So why do facilities all of a sudden turn into you can’t, you can’t, you can’t, and then we throw the kids in there.”
Fuhrman was quick to respond.
“Eddy’s (Clemons) mentioned this a hundred times. Our kids are the most important thing,” Fuhrman said. “I don’t see sending them down to the other facility.”
Morrissette sought clarification on where Fuhrman’s instructions were coming from.
“If that makes sense, it’s fine. It’s something for discussion,” he said. “But if the city and county want to do this, I thought they were leaving it up to us. You made a statement that somebody didn’t want any of the schools closed. Was that the county? Was that the city or is that the word on the street?”
Fuhrman didn’t identify the government officials he’d spoken with by name.
“I’ve talked to a couple council members and they don’t want any schools in the city closed,” said Fuhr-man.
At the behest of their respective governments, Alleghany County and Cov-ington City school boards have begun talks on merging the two school systems into a jointly operated system. While the boards will ultimately decide if, and how, to merge the schools, Covington school board member Eddy Clemons saw a lack of government involvement as an “obstacle.”
“They want us to make a decision and they say they will support us, but are they really?” wondered Clemons. “If we make the wrong decision in the eyes of three council members, then we have a real issue.
“We have to look after their support,” he added. “That’s been my thing since day one. The board of supervisors and city council need to be an integral part in this.
“They say they’re going to support us, but then they’re going to support us only if we make the decisions they’re going to be happy with. If that’s the case, they have to be an integral part,” Clemons added. “Covington High School, whether or not it is going to close, is going to be part of the decision on the street.”
Tammy Scruggs-Duncan pointed out that the board has already reached a consensus on the issue.
“We have to, as the Covington City School Board, enter into this looking out for the Covington city school kids,” she said. I thought we already had a consensus, that its not necessary to close any schools.
“We know we can afford what we’re doing right now,” she added. “We were in a consensus on how we were going to enter this and it was not to diminish what we have in place.”
Bennett urged the board to look at the possibilities of a joint system.
“We have to look at what we can create,” said Bennett. “There are so many positive things that can come of this. Even when we looked at compensation, in very general terms, there was an agreement that no parties needed to be harmed by this merger. It’s a positive thing.”
The two boards met last month at Jackson River Technical Center to begin the process and decided that the chairman and vice chairman of each board, along with the superintendents, would meet to examine the possible advantages of a merged system and identify the starting points for the talks.
“These are basically get-to-know-you kind of meetings,” said Fuhrman.
Among the first priorities identified in the “get-to-know-you meeting” were the issues of compensation, school board representation and funding.
“Personally I think representation is the number one priority,” said Long. “If you can’t agree on representation, or funding or compensation, well there’s a lot of things that are important but there’s no point in discussing them if you can’t agree on these first.”
The next meeting between the Covington City School Board and Alleghany County School Board is scheduled for October 23 at 6 p.m. at Jackson River Technical Center.
