STARKVILLE — At the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, ninth-graders will be back at Starkville High School.
Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District trustees unanimously approved the move Monday night at their monthly board meeting. Freshmen have been attending along with eighth-graders at Armstrong Junior High School for the last three years.
Returning freshmen to SHS — where they attended prior to the 2020-21 school year — would allow the students to have all of their classes and extracurricular activities at one campus instead of traveling between two. Currently some freshmen are beginning and ending their days at the high school and only coming to Armstrong for the middle of the day.
“I’ve seen it as a parent both ways — with the ninth grade over (at SHS), with the ninth grade here in this building,” board member Sumner Davis said during the meeting at Armstrong. “To me, (moving ninth grade back to SHS) is the right decision.”
The move will transfer roughly 400 more students to SHS, which will house 1,450 students rather than the 1,043 attending there now. But it will also reduce the Armstrong campus, which has supported as many as three grades, to housing just one.
It also comes on the heels of roughly $3.6 million in renovations to the Armstrong campus.
The district spent about $2.4 million from its capital improvement fund this school year to renovate Armstrong’s A building and gymnasium, district public information officer Haley Montgomery confirmed. It spent another $1.2 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to heating, ventilation and air conditioning, as well as mechanical system upgrades for all buildings.
Superintendent Tony McGee said the district will continue to discuss the highest and best use for that campus and will likely broach the matter at a future board work session.
“Armstrong’s renovated A building and gym will be used to house our eighth-grade students and offer them access to new and updated classrooms, science labs, physical education, library, makerspace and high tech production spaces,” McGee said. “The district is in beginning discussions about how we will use the full campus in the 2023-24 school year. I’m working with our team to ensure we think long-term and comprehensively about our options for the campus. Our goal is to use the available space in a way that best benefits our students, families and community.”
Monday’s vote comes nearly a month after initial discussions about the move that McGee brought forward. SHS principal Darein Spann presented a plan for onboarding the freshmen to the board in January.
Prior to the 2020-21 school year, Armstrong served as a middle school and housed grades 6-8. Grades 6-7 moved to Partnership Middle School — a demonstration school partnership between SOCSD and Mississippi State — when it opened that year, and the ninth grade moved to Armstrong.
SHS in 2019 established academic houses, which are four-year preparation courses based on chosen career paths. Though students begin those in ninth grade, Forbes said freshmen feel disconnected from their academic houses while at Armstrong.
Forbes said the move will help eighth-graders, too.
“The renovations that are currently taking place in A building will be a great learning opportunity,” Forbes said. “… Everything that we have in the makerspace room, in the science labs are going to provide those learning opportunities for students to explore and help them identify their passion, their purpose and potential as they select their academic houses as they move forward.”
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