The Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District became the second district to cut ties with the Golden Triangle Early College High School with two unanimous votes by the board of trustees at their Tuesday meeting.
Superintendent Eddie Peasant recommended the board not renew the district’s memorandum of understanding with GTECHS, which would have allowed the district to continue sending students to the early college high school on East Mississippi Community College’s Mayhew campus next school year. The district’s current agreement with GTECHS will end on June 30. Peasant also recommended the board reject a contract with GTECHS for the 2020-21 school year.
Columbus Municipal School District voted earlier this month to sever ties with GTECHS.
GTECHS has 222 students from Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee counties. The school is designed for students who would not necessarily thrive, either socially or academically, in a traditional high school and allows students the opportunity to take college-level courses and graduate high school with an associate’s degree.
Students are accepted to GTECHS on an application basis, and home school districts receive state funds for each student who attends there.
But Peasant said he is concerned that funding from the Mississippi Adequate Education Program allocated to SOCSD but diverted to Starkville students at GTECHS is actually paying for some students who previously were homeschooled or attended private schools. MAEP funds are allocated to each district based on a headcount of students who attended district schools the previous year.
Peasant also said he does not believe all students accepted to GTECHS match the intended targets of “at-risk” or students trying to be the first generation in their families to attend college.
“The purpose of our school is to provide free and appropriate public education through public funds for students that live in our community,” Peasant said. “This program, from my research and the things I know about it, has actually used public funds to fund a private-type setting.”
He estimated that about 40 percent of Starkville students at GTECHS did not attend Armstrong Middle School, based on information he received from the Lowndes County School District, the original fiscal agent for GTECHS. The participating districts voted last year to transfer fiscal agency to EMCC so GTECHS students would not have to transfer from their home districts to LCSD in order to enroll.
Starkville Academy, one of two private schools in Starkville, has had two students leave to attend GTECHS in the five years since the program started, Head Master Jeremy Nicholas told The Dispatch.
“It’s up to them as to which individual students they accept, (and) always an individual family decision on the student’s part,” he said.
A less costly option
The proposed GTECHS budget for the 2020-21 academic year states that the base cost of sending one student to GTECHS is $6,609, so it would cost SOCSD $277,578 to send the 42 students that have enrolled. The dual enrollment fees would total another $25,360.
This does not include the roughly $16,000 per year it costs to bus the students to and from EMCC, or the cost of individualized education programs for special-needs students, Peasant said.
Last week, when the CMSD board of trustees ended its own relationship with GTECHS on Superintendent Cherie Labat’s recommendation. Labat said it would cost the district $130,000, plus transportation and special education costs, to send more than 40 students to GTECHS. Board President Jason Spears said this morning that with additional costs, it might be closer to $250,000.
Peasant said SOCSD can provide the smaller class sizes and dual enrollment opportunities that GTECHS boasts, and the district did not have those options five years ago when it entered into the GTECHS agreement.
Starkville High School implemented three academic houses this year: Technology, Engineering, Construction (TEC); Health and Human Services (H2S); and Communication, Arts and Business (CAB). The initiative is meant to expose students to skills they will need for their future careers.
The houses “will coincide a lot better” with a program Peasant introduced to the board Tuesday called the “middle college program.” It will allow more students to take college courses at EMCC and receive an associate’s degree with their high school diploma, it is aimed at the same “at-risk” students and it will only cost about $3,000 per student, Peasant said.
The COVID-19 pandemic is “making it a little bit difficult” to get the program ready for next school year, but it might happen, Peasant told The Dispatch.
SOCSD hopes to implement GTECHS’ “family-type setting” at all its campuses with the reconfiguration of its schools starting in August, when the Partnership School for grades 6-7 at Mississippi State University is scheduled to open, Peasant said. AMS will become Armstrong Junior High School for grades 8-9, and SHS will be for grades 10-12.
“I think that sets us up to have a better setting that would more similarly compare to what they describe at GTECHS,” Peasant said.
EMCC President Scott Alsobrooks said in a prepared statement this morning that it is “unfortunate” two districts have decided to end their partnerships with GTECHS.
Partnership School construction to continue
Construction of the Partnership School will resume Thursday after it was temporarily halted due to the pandemic, Peasant said. Columbus-based West Brothers Construction will work in small groups adhering to social distancing guidelines, and they expect to be finished in four or five weeks, he said, putting it back on schedule to open for the 2020-21 academic year.
Gov. Tate Reeves announced Tuesday that schools statewide will be closed for the rest of the academic year. This means SOCSD can try to start summer school as early in June as possible and start deep-cleaning its buildings in the near future instead of waiting until the summer to sanitize them, Peasant said.
The district continues to distribute meals to students three days a week, and Peasant said two donors recently provided face masks for both the bus drivers and the food service workers.
“We’ve been able to create the safest possible environment that we can with those programs,” he said.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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