Published: May 20, 2008 09:26 am            

For R.C. Fisher, class is dismissed

Athens school district announces campus operations will be suspended starting next year

Over the last few months, Athens school officials have wrangled with what grade level of students will walk the halls of R.C. Fisher.

They now have an answer: none.

Athens Independent School District Superintendent Dr. Fred Hayes confirmed Monday that operations at R.C. Fisher will be suspended indefinitely starting next school year. The campus will remain closed until money is secured to remodel its facilities for pre-kindergarten students.

The announcement was made public on the school district’s Web site in a posting regarding its plans following the failure of a $28.4 million bond issue May 10.

“It is being closed, because we are looking at our operating expenditures,” Hayes said.

Hayes said the cost for operating a single grade campus — such as R.C. Fisher — could cost around $500,000 next year, of which $376,000 would be used on salaries. According to the school’s Web site, money saved from not operating R.C. Fisher next year will be used for improvements on other campuses.

Had the bond passed, administration officials planned to move pre-kindergarten students to R.C. Fisher starting next school year. The students from R.C. Fisher — a sixth-grade-only campus — are moving to Athens Middle School (AMS) beginning next year.

Hayes said R.C. Fisher wouldn’t have opened for pre-k students in the fall even if the bond had passed.

“It would have opened — at the earliest — in the spring semester,” he said. “The plan now has to be delayed.”

Larry West, a former board member who failed in his recent bid to be elected to the school board a second time, said it is hard to understand why the decision was made to close down the only campus in North Athens. A number of community members expressed concern that Fisher was going to be taken away from the North Athens community as talk of campus reorganization was discussed.

“This is a sad day for our community,” West said. “I am hurt more about losing a school in North Athens than about losing the election.”

Hayes said he communicated his decision about Fisher to the school board, but the board does not have to act on the issue to make it official. That communication was relayed in an e-mail.

Board member Ginger Kirk — who has vocally opposed moving sixth-grader from Fisher to AMS — said she began receiving phone calls and e-mails from district employees last Monday. Those calls and e-mails, she said, concerned a districtwide e-mail from Hayes regarding Fisher’s fate.

“I did not know about this until teachers began calling me,” she said. “I think we need to visit this as a board. ... We don’t need to neglect North Athens.”

Board President David Freeman said the community should have known R.C. Fisher would be vacant if the bond didn’t pass.

“That should have been (the) writing on the wall,” he said. “If the community did not understand that, we had community forums. The community had ample time to ask that question, but it would be common knowledge that if you move the kids off that campus and you stated that the kids would be moved regardless of the bond ... now we don’t have the money.”

Hayes said he doesn’t know if people will be surprised by R.C. Fisher’s closing. He said his priority is student education and the district’s finances. He said he puts political and community views in third place, and any reaction over the school being closed would be categorized in the third category.

“If the board were to come back and say that community or political issues outweigh either of those other two things, then I would certainly listen to that,” Hayes said, “because that would be a goal or a vision that the board has. But that has not been communicated to me at this time.”

        

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