The Marion County School Board approved the closure of Evergreen Elementary by split vote during their regular meeting Tuesday night.
The closure, which will take effect on May 28, 2021, comes after years of intense focus to bring the elementary school’s grade up.
“Evergreen was an ‘A’ school. There has been years of what I would call questionable decision making when it came to staffing and who the principals were going to be and a lot of turnover year after year. That type of management doesn’t create success,” said Chair Nancy Thrower, who represents District 4.
Thrower, who cast a measure against the closure, did so in protest of what she suggested was a failure at the highest levels of the state.
“The teachers didn’t bail on Evergreen Elementary school. The decisions made above us bailed on them,” said Thrower.
Thrower went on to suggest that the board had worked hard to reverse course for the elementary, but that staffing was an insurmountable problem.
“We can’t find the teachers anymore to come and teach at Evergreen Elementary School, no matter how much we pay them. That should resonate with this community,” said Thrower.
Beth McCall of District 2 stated that she was “disappointed in the department of education,” for not using the board’s data to help keep the school open. Like McCall, Allison Campbell of District 1 made reference to a large decline in student enrollment in recent years. Campbell cited the school capacity at 700 and stated enrollment was only around 200.
“I want the community to understand all that has gone into this effort for the past two years. These students did have highly effective teachers working with them, they did have multiple resources at their disposal, they did have multiple administrators spending time on that campus on a regular basis,” said Campbell of the county’s efforts to keep the school open.