Granville school consolidation debate focuses on Hawley, Creedmoor

Dec. 21—OXFORD — Granville County's school board has formally reopened its discussion of school consolidation, focusing for now on the future of G.C. Hawley Middle School and Creedmoor Elementary School.

Board members this week voted 7-0 to ask Superintendent Alisa McLean and her staff to update a study on the ramifications of closing Creedmoor Elementary, with the idea that it would become a "Hawley Annex" that would accommodate the middle school's students and academic programs.

They also agreed to schedule a Jan. 17 public hearing to give residents a chance to weigh in on the idea. The hearing will occur at 6 p.m., at a location that remains to be determined, officials said.

The board's two-hour discussion of consolidation on Monday made it clear that members see the closure of Hawley as "the low-hanging fruit," as District 7 member Taylor Frederick called it, of the long-running debate on what to do about schools on the southern end of the county.

Hawley dates from the 1960s and has at least $5.2 million in maintenance backlogs that board members aren't eager to spend the money on.

When it comes to finding a solution for Hawley, "it's time we stopped kicking the can down the road," District 4 member Leonard Peace said.

By contrast, board members on Monday signaled that they have little interest in addressing a merger of their district's three high schools, all of which are operating significantly under capacity, with Oxford's J.F. Webb High School serving only 49.8% of the students McLean's staff believes it could.

District 2 member Helen Lindsay and board Chairwoman Glenda Williams, the District 3 representative, both voiced firm objections to consolidating high schools, to little disagreement from their colleagues.

Lindsay said she was a counselor at Granville Central High School when it opened in the late 2000s and said there were "some pretty tense moments" between the former students of Webb and South Granville High School who were assigned there.

"Right now we have some unrest in our schools across the county," she said. "Combining high schools may [cause] more of a headache for us rather than letting them remain as they are."

She added that high school students throughout the district are learning losses triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and don't need additional disruptions, a point Williams echoed.

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Williams also said a merger of high schools would undercut the Granville County Public Schools' attempts to allow parents to choose which of the district's schools their children attend.

A merger of South Granville and Granville Central — an option the board embraced briefly last year, before walking back the decision under pressure from community and business leaders in Creedmoor — would force the board to draw new attendance zones for the surviving school and Webb.

But Williams noted that a lot of families in Webb's existing district have opted to send their kids to Granville Central instead — and that a merger of the southern high schools would likely mean going forward that there wouldn't be room for them anywhere but at Webb.

"It seems like to me if we were to [merge high schools], we'd almost be eliminating choice for our students at the high school level," she said.

Converting Creedmoor Elementary would also mean adjusting attendance districts and moving students around, but board members signaled they don't think that has the same risk of between-student tension as it might at the high school level.

Administrators said that if Creedmoor ceases to be an elementary school, they'd have to divide its attendance zone among those for Butner-Stem Elementary, Mount Energy Elementary, Wilton Elementary and Tar River Elementary.

The question that most vexed members of the board on Monday was whether they should take on a bigger task affecting elementary and middle schools, namely the possibility of moving away from the existing split that makes K-5 the elementary grades, and 6 through 8 the middle school grades.

Some board members have signaled that they suspect the grades 6-8 middle school model is unpopular with parents, and that switching at least one school and maybe more to a K-6 or K-8 set-up could help blunt the popularity of charter schools that offer families a single, unified program from kindergarten through high school.

At Frederick's urging, the Granville system will study K-6 and K-8 options as well as potential added middle-school redistricting, but administrators have until June to report on those — meaning they won't affect the 2023-24 school year.

Peace was adamant that a broader discussion of the middle school model not interfere with relocating Hawley's students.

Assistant Superintendent Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Stan Winborne also pointed out that the time's already short for making decisions about student assignments for 2023-24, given that the window for choice-school sign-ups for the coming academic year opens in February.

Contact Ray Gronberg at rgronberg@hendersondispatch.com or by phone at 252-436-2850.