For decades, children approaching their early teenage years in the Jefferson County town of Redfield have gone to classes in a small, local school building.
But those days are numbered.
The White Hall School District will close Redfield Middle School at the end of the school year.
The district’s School Board voted last week to close the school, originally constructed by Works Progress Administration workers in the 1930s, and transfer its 125 students to White Hall Middle School, which hasabout 615 students. Both schools have sixth- through eighth-grade classes.
The decision, which leaders said was motivated by cost-cutting efforts, concerned some members of the Redfield community, which had a population of 1,297 in the 2010 Census.
“The core teachers have been there a long time,” said Carol Tucker, a teacher who retired in 2010 after 30 years of teaching at Redfield Middle School. “We know all of the kids, and we know their families. We’re really involved.”
Community members attended public meetings, traded newspaper articlesand started a group on Facebook to campaign against the closure.
White Hall Superintendent Larry Smith said any decision that deals with “people’s kids or people’s money” is difficult, “and schools deal with both.”
The district estimates closing the school will save about $350,000 in annual maintenance, operations and staffing expenses, he said.
The district will transfer many of Redfield Middle School’s employees to White Hall Middle School, he said, and any reductions in staff will likely be made through attrition.
A combination of declining enrollment, projected increases in employee healthcare costs and potential federal funding cuts have caused the School Board to look for ways to trim the district’s $25 million budget, Smith said.
The district’s enrollment, which sits at 2,993, has dropped 5.7 percent since 2004, according to data from the Arkansas Department of Education.
Because the state distributes funds on a per-student basis, declining enrollment can cause problems for some districts, Smith said. Repeated declining year-end fundbalances, for example, could trigger a fiscal distress designation from the Arkansas Board of Education. That label could lead to spending restrictions or a possible state takeover.
The district has not been at risk of fiscal distress, Smith said.
“This is getting ahead of the game to make sure we don’t go into fiscal distress,” he said.
Administrators were also concerned about projected costs to renovate the 37,000-square-foot building, which doesn’t meet current state standards.
While the building’s total area seems adequate, it’s poorly configured: Classrooms are too small and othercommon rooms, such as the auditorium, are larger than necessary, Smith said.
“The building is large enough in square footage, but it’s kind of the wrong square feet,” he said.
District leaders also considered expanding Redfield’s other school, Hardin Elementary, to make room for students from Redfield Middle School. They abandoned the plan when they estimated it would cost about $3.5 million.
Redfield schools were merged into the White Hall School District in 1948, and the buildings still serve as a gathering point for community members, who use the middle school gym for town events, Tucker said.
The board has not determined what it will do with the Redfield Middle School building after the school is closed, Smith said.
“We’re not at a point where we’re ready to make that decision,” he said.
On Facebook, members of the Keep Redfield Middle School group continued to react to the board’s decision Friday.
Some proposed the creation of an open-enrollment charter school to replace Redfield Middle School. Others sought memories of the school to fill pages in its final yearbook.
“I’m upset that it’s closing,” Tucker said. “I taught children of people that I taught there.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/14/2013