Four Fayette schools fall to budget ax

FOUR FAYETTE SCHOOLS AT A GLANCE

The Fayette County school system has 30 schools and 20,464 students. Here’s a look at the four schools slated to be closed in August. Exact numbers of teachers and staff at each school were not available:

School — opened — students — transfer to

Brooks Elementary — 1962 — 241 — Peeples Elementary and Inman Elementary

Tyrone Elementary — 1980 — 337 — Crabapple Lane Elementary and Robert J. Burch Elementary

Fayette Intermediate — 1962 — 402 — Hood Elementary and Spring Hill Elementary

(Intermediate is 3rd-5th grades)

Fayette Middle — 1986 — 697 — Bennett’s Mill Middle

Source: Fayette County Schools

Four Fayette County schools will close in August as part of the Southside school district’s effort to rein in a $15 million budget deficit.

The school board made the move this week despite the protests of parents, teachers and students at the four schools. Closing Tyrone Elementary, Brooks Elementary, Fayette Middle School and Fayetteville Intermediate School is expected to save the system $3.2 million. The 1,677 students at those schools will be sent to neighboring schools.

“I’ve lost a lot of sleep over this,” board member Leonard Presberg said during Monday’s meeting.

The closings are just the start of what is expected to be contentious cuts by the school system over the next few months. In addition to the four school closings, the board is considering cutting about 300 jobs.

The Brooks and Tyrone closures caused the most consternation. Brooks is a rural community in the southwest tip of the county where life and activities are centered around the elementary school. Tyrone has built a reputation as a top-performing school.

Public meetings on the closings were heavily attended by parents, teachers and students from Brooks and Tyrone. They were concerned the closings would dilute their communities’ identities and hurt property values, making it more difficult to draw families to the area because children would have to travel farther to go to school.

Longtime Brooks residents Micah and Tracey Goodman said Tuesday they understood the school district’s dilemma. The couple has three teenage sons who attended Brooks Elementary.

“I hate to see it happen but I know you have to get your financial house in order,” said Micah Goodman, who also attended Brooks Elementary. “You can’t keep spending money you don’t have.”

But Tracey Goodman, former Parent Teacher Organization president at Brooks Elementary, said the tiny community is losing its “heartbeat.”

“A lot of the community is built around the school,” Goodman said.

At the end of Monday’s meeting, Brooks teachers and families, many wearing yellow school T-shirts, hugged and wiped away tears as they left.

Board members were the most split about closing Brooks. The school was closed by a 3-2 vote while the other schools drew a 4-1 vote to close.

“I feel like I’m giving a eulogy,” said newly elected board member Barry Marchman, who felt closing Tyrone was “absolutely the wrong thing to do.”