New criteria for school closings

Parents at a North Charleston primary school are speaking out about fears that the school could close.  The district is in the middle of a plan to possibly consolidate schools to help off set major budget cuts.

Parents like Marva Crawford at Dunston Primary are doing the math.

“Keep Dunston Primary open,” she shouted outside the school, waiving a sign to drivers passing by.

With lower enrollment numbers they know the Charleston County school District could close the school or merge it with another as part of the district’s school consolidation plan to cut costs.

“If you choose to consolidate this school, it will crush the community. It will crush it,” she told board members.

Crawford joined a bus load of parents and students at Monday night’s school board meeting to show just how much the North Charleston community depends on Dunston Primary.

“We’ve made a lot of changes in the school. As of today our enrollment is 287.”

Demographics is just one part of the equation the district will consider when deciding whether or not to close or merge a school.  It will also look at the quality of education and facility conditions—assigning a point value to a set of 12 criteria. The schools with the highest numbers will be at the top of the list for possible consolidation. A list teacher Judy Dunston Epps’s says the school doesn’t want to be on.

“This is truly a neighborhood school,” she said addressing the board.

The school was named after Epps’s mother, a former principal.  She says without the school the community will crumble—but the school board cautions that they haven’t started crunching the numbers yet and haven’t made any decisions about which schools will close.

“I’ve been told that ‘you guys are going through the motions and you’ve already decided’, but that’s not true. None of that has been decided,” said board chairman Hillery Douglas after the meeting.

The district originally started with 16 criteria.  After receiving input from more than 900 parents, students and staff through community meetings, they voted Monight on a final twelve.  Those deal with education quality, demographics and school condition.

They decided not to evaluate schools based on building use, minimal school size, and the number of students who transfer out.

The district will now use the final criteria to evaluate each school and make recommendations for possible consolidation.  The superintendent will present those recommendations at the November 24th board meeting. 

Then the district will hold another round of community meetings for input.  The board plans to vote on the final recommendations in December or January.