As renovations at the Hunt school campus wrap up, Columbus Municipal School District is trying to determine what students will go to school there.
The board of trustees is weighing whether to house only sixth grade at the school as originally planned or add fifth grade into the mix at the start of the 2025-2026 school year.
During a special-call meeting Dec. 19, Board Vice President Robert Smith asked Superintendent Stanley Ellis if there are plans to meet with faculty and staff who will be affected by the transition to Hunt. Trustee Telisa Young asked the same about meeting with students and parents.
Ellis said those meetings could start as soon as next month, but the details – along with decisions about grade-span consolidation and options for repurposing Franklin Academy – are all slated to be discussed during a work session Jan. 18.
CMSD is pursuing $36 million in facility upgrades after voters approved a bond issue in May. Part of the bond plan includes closing or repurposing two elementary campuses and consolidating elementary grades into the remaining three.
Smith encouraged Ellis to have a solid idea of how Franklin – a historic landmark for being the state’s first public school – could be repurposed once the consolidation process begins.
“I can just imagine the calls you’re going to get concerning Franklin and the school district as to what the plans are, if the building is for sale,” Smith said. “So that’s something I think you and your team need to be seriously thinking about.”
Board member Jo Shumake asked Ellis during the meeting if the transition to Hunt would trigger the district’s plans to consolidate its elementary schools.
“If we get the piece of the fifth and sixth grade in place, what kind of effect does it have on the rest of the school district?” she asked Ellis.
The district’s five elementary schools currently operate under a magnet school model, meaning each houses kindergarten through fifth grade with a specific themed emphasis, like aerospace and science. Under grade span, each of the three remaining campuses would house certain grades.
Ellis presented the board with a tentative plan for consolidation that would have Stokes-Beard Elementary housing pre-kindergarten through first grade and Cook Elementary housing second through fourth grade.
He stressed the plan was only for consideration to “see if it was something that we could live with.” But with no mention of Sale Elementary, the plan caused some confusion.
“Where is Sale in this picture?” Shumake asked. “There’s no Sale mentioned at all.”
Ellis said the exclusion was intentional and made in consideration of the bond-funded projects that will be happening at the other elementary schools. With construction happening at the same time, consolidation will be a gradual roll out, he said.
Board President Cynthia Brown told The Dispatch on Thursday the district still intends to keep Sale as one of the three remaining elementary schools when they are eventually consolidated. But for now, the plan is to house students who are affected by bond projects at the school, she said.
“Cook is going to require a lot of work, and it may not take all of Cook, but it may take some of those children,” she said. “So we’ve got to have schools that we could shift children to, and Sale is more upgraded than Franklin and Fairview.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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