Asheville schools consider potential middle school reconfiguration among $4.5M shortfall

ASHEVILLE - As Asheville City Schools hurdles toward a $4.5 million funding cliff, a seemingly unpopular proposal has reared its head: reconfiguration of the district's two middle schools.

The leading cost-saving measure, according to the district, and the option taking the most heat, is the consolidation of Montford North Star Academy — a 220-student Project Based Learning-oriented school that opened in 2017 — with Asheville Middle School.

Asheville Middle, on South French Broad Avenue just outside of downtown's South Slope, has about 543 students, with room to grow.

"Hit the pause button," was the refrain of parents at a Feb. 19 special called Asheville school board meeting.

Montford parents threatened to move students out of the district if the schools were combined, fearing the decision would "displace" 30% of the district's middle schoolers.

Hanging over the conversation was the specter of Asheville Primary School, the beloved West Asheville school that was closed in 2022 despite widespread outrage from community.

"Montford North Star is succeeding. If you are trying to draw more families to ACS, you do not want your headline to be, 'come join us at ACS, where we close schools that are working,'" said Michele Torino Hower, a parent of a North Star student who "lived through" the closing of Asheville Primary. The line, like many throughout the evening, drew applause from the crowded room.

Other options were also on the table as the district assessed consolidation of schools — such as moving North Star to another site, but not combining it with Asheville Middle; decreasing from five to four elementary schools; from two high schools to one; and more — but middle school reconfiguration was found to be among the most tenable, according to a presentation from Superintendent Maggie Fehrman, and is where conversation focused.

Why is the district considering 'potential' reconfiguration?

Since the 2014-15 school year, enrollment in Asheville City Schools has dropped by 600 students, Fehrman said. The district has the same number of staff despite the decrease.

All facilities are under capacity to varying degrees, she said, and state and local budget revenues can not keep pace with expenditures.

Further complicating the decision is a "critical need" to find a home for the district's Education and Career Center, which provides programming for students for whom traditional school is not a match. ECA students have not had a permanent location since 2008. They have been relocated four times to different sites. Currently, ECA is housed at the Arthur R. Edington center, where the district leases space from the housing authority.

There are 32 students enrolled at ECA, said April Dockery, the district's crisis management and operations executive director, with a waitlist of four.

Losing school choice was one complaint from parents at a Feb. 19 Middle School Reconfiguration Hearing, held at the district's administrative offices on Mountain Street. Following presentations from Asheville Middle and North Star's respective Parent Teacher Organization heads, nearly 20 people — mostly Montford North Star parents — said they opposed middle school reconfiguration.

As it stands now, parents of fifth-grade students in the district complete an ACS School Selection form, indicating middle school preference.

Sandra Brown, president of the Asheville Middle School PTO, was among the only Asheville Middle parents to speak. She gave a presentation that spent time highlighting the things she and others love about the school, and extended support to Montford parents, saying that "we really want you to be part of our family, if it comes to that."

In a brief statement about reconfiguration, Brown said she was not supportive of housing both schools on one campus or combining to create a new middle school.

“When it comes to placing a school within a school, we think it’s complicated and unnecessary,” Brown said. Likewise, "we strongly believe there is no need to create a new school, either."

Brown expanded on her position Feb. 20 to the Citizen Times, and said, "we remain neutral on the reconfiguration issue and aim to reassure MNSA families that we empathize with their concerns. The AMS PTO is ready to support them should they become part of our school community once more."

Capacity discrepancies

Sarah Armstrong, North Star PTO president and a former teacher at the school, said while they acknowledge "looming" financial issues and a need to find ECA a home, "our questioning is why is the Montford North Star Academy building potentially the only option on the table?"

She asked after the Haywood Road campus, once home to Asheville Primary, and the building she and others crowded into that night — the Mountain Street facility housing central office staff.

Fehrman said both buildings are no longer coded as schools, and would have to undergo "significant upgrades" to return to a school use and be brought back up to code. The district, along with Buncombe County, is considering a feasibility study for the Haywood campus.

Armstrong and others emphasized that North Star has "met or exceeded growth" in recent years, with some progress made to close the glaring achievement gap between Black and white students, and questioned why "academic effectiveness" was not included among the board's reconfiguration considerations.

Among the most emphatic complaints involved enrollment and capacity numbers provided by the district, which parents, including Armstrong, felt were "absolutely inaccurate."

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Critics called the numbers misleading, painting a bullseye on the school's back.

Fehrman acknowledged that capacity numbers were potentially out-of-date. They and others were taken from the district's most recent capacity study, done in 2021. In November, the school board initiated a new $28,500 study. The results are not yet available.

Numbers presented by the district in November found the capacity at North Star sat at 217 students enrolled out of a possible 765 students, or 28.4%.

But as parents point out, the school is nearly fully enrolled, having previously reported an enrollment capacity of about 240 students.

In a conversation with the Citizen Times, Fehrman confirmed that with class limits of 80 per grade level, 240 is the current enrollment capacity for the number of teachers assigned to the school, and the way the building is set up.

“We know we’ve got information hodge-podge all over the place,” Fehrman said. “Is it updated, accurate information? That’s the question.”

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She said the higher number represents the capacity for the building itself, and that additional information is incoming. Parents also argue this cannot be accurate, questioning how North Star, at 57,374 square feet, could have a building capacity of upward of 700 students when Asheville Middle School, three times larger at 174,695 square feet, according to the PTO presentation, has a capacity of 1,000 students.

"The numbers, they feel like they don't make sense," Armstrong said. "So we would very much like accurate capacity numbers before making a decision based on capacity."

North Star opened on Montford Avenue in August 2017 as sixth grade only. Seventh grade was added in August 2018 and eighth grade in 2019.

Savings?

Fehrman's presentation offered the "potential savings" of reconfiguration options, necessitated by an anticipated $4.5 million shortfall in the fiscal year 2025 budget and a steady enrollment decline.

Current enrollment is 3,890 students, down from 4,620 in 2016.

Moving North Star to another site, sharing space with an existing facility, projects $311,005 in savings, per the district's presentation.

Combining the two middle schools, with an estimated reduction of 18 positions, realized through attrition, could save $1.8 million to $2.3 million.

Fehrman described the numbers as an "initial forecast" of what could be saved with a "lean staff allocation."

“We have to do that district-wide. Whether we combine the two schools or not, we have to reduce staff because we have way more staff than what we could be operating with," she said.

More and more districts are facing immense funding cliffs, Fehrman said — citing New Hanover and Durham schools, each reporting multi-million-dollar shortfalls. Asheville City Schools is grappling with the expiration of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds and an end to the temporary "hold harmless" policies for enrollment in fiscal year 2025.

New state-mandated raises, while deserved for staff, she said, are not funded in full by the state, leaving districts to make up the balance with local funds. Earlier in February, Asheville school board approved a 2% local supplement increase for all employees, totaling about $1 million annually.

Fehrman makes an annual base salary of $215,000, not including any local or state supplements, according to previous reporting from the Citizen Times.

She said reconfiguration gives the district an opportunity to create a new vision for its middle school.

"I think there is some really exciting new research at the middle school level and redesigning middle school together to try to see: What are the great things happening at Asheville Middle School, what are the great things happening at Montford, how do we take all the gifts and talents of the staff so they can be even better together?" she said.

Other advantages named by the district include eliminating transportation from North Star to sports and extracurriculars at Asheville Middle and maximizing a "state of the art" middle school building, opened in 2016 and carrying a price tag of about $41 million.

What's next?

Asheville school board will hold another public hearing at 5 p.m. Feb. 27 in its board room at 85 Mountain St. An updated enrollment study will be presented to the school board at its March 4 work session. A final study presentation and board vote is scheduled for March 11.

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Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. Please support local, daily journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: What to know: Asheville schools consider middle school reconfiguration