Julie Ball

jball@citizen-times.com

BURNSVILLE - Yancey County school board members voted Monday to close and consolidate three community schools that had served generations of Yancey families.

Bee Log, Bald Creek and Clearmont elementary schools will be consolidated into a single, new school to serve the west end of the county.

“There’s nobody on this board that wanted to close those community schools. Our children went to those schools. My wife went to one of those schools. It’s very much a part of Yancey County," said Yancey County School Board Chairman Mike Orr.

But Orr said the school district has no choice with declining enrollment and aging buildings and infrastructure.

The school board voted in favor of consolidation at a sparsely attended meeting Monday night at Mountain Heritage High School.

No one spoke during a public hearing on the matter.

Clearmont parent Brandy Jarrard said parents felt school closings were inevitable whether they were on the east or west end of the county.

“I feel like they had their minds made up ahead of time,” Jarrard said. “And I honestly don’t feel like the children are being taken into consideration because we have children who are already on the bus for well over an hour and a half now.”

The school district does not have a location for the new school yet. One of the next steps will be purchasing land for the new building.

Bee Log, Bald Creek and Clearmont will remain open through the end of the 2017-18 school year.

If needed, “We can extend that timeline. We just can’t move it forward and do it faster,” Orr said.

At a meeting in August, the board heard a report from the superintendent that looked at either closing and consolidating the three schools in the west or consolidating Micaville and South Toe elementary schools in the east and replacing them with a new school.

The report concluded the district would save more money and impact more students by consolidating the three western schools.

Bee Log, Bald Creek and Clearmont were built in the 1930s. Bald Creek is the largest with 173 students in 2014-15. Bee Log had just 54 students that year.

The schools are all in the flood plain, and Bee Log’s septic system has failed. The district is pumping sewage from the school. Other problems identified with the schools included undersized classrooms and wood construction.

Orr said in the 1980s the district made the decision to keep the community schools, but “that same strategy” won’t work today. The costs to continue to maintain the old schools would be “overwhelming.”

Yancey superintendent Tony Tipton “did not want to close any school without having a better place to put children,” Orr said. “That’s been a driving force in this.”

The county plans to borrow $10 million for a new school. The school district will put up $1.5 million.

“This is going to be hard. This is going to hurt some small communities, but the board believes that education is going to be moving forward in Yancey County, and it’s already good,” Orr said.

It’s not clear yet what will happen to the old buildings once the schools close.

Orr said the school district could find a use for them or could offer them to the county. If the county doesn’t want the buildings, the school district could sell them or possibly offer them at a low price to the community for use as community buildings.

Yancey considers elementary school consolidation, closures