Everybody had a “junk drawer” in their home, a place to stash away odds and ends that may or may not be of some use at some point.
It’s no big deal.
Unless that junk drawer happens to be a school that taxpayers and the school district have invested $3.6 million to renovate.
During Monday’s Starkville Oktibbeha Consolidated School District meeting, the board unanimously approved returning its 9th graders to Starkville High School next year after three years at Armstrong. Since the 2020-21 school year, Armstrong has been home to grades 8 and 9.
Next year, Armstrong, once the home for grades 6, 7 and 8, may now hold classes for just the 8th grade.
District officials made a strong case for why it’s best for 9th graders to return to the high school. What it hasn’t articulated is how using a campus the size of Armstrong for a single grade is an efficient use of the property. Officials have made some vague suggestions about how additional space will benefit its 8th graders, but considering the size of the campus and the investment made in it, a well-conceived plan effectively communicated to stakeholders about what opportunities are now open is in order.
Lacking those details, it suggests that Armstrong has been an afterthought long before Monday’s decision, likely dating back to the planning of the Partnership School, which would accommodate the 6th and 7th graders from Armstrong. An enormous amount of time and planning went into the Partnership School, but much less thought appears to have been devoted to how the dominos would fall once the new school opened for the 2020-21 school year. The idea was to shift the 9th graders to Armstrong so it would be home to two grades, but over the past three years, it became evident that separating 9th graders from the high school was not ideal since many students involved in extracurricular activities found themselves bouncing back and forth between campuses.
As it became evident that 9th graders should return to the high school, serious consideration for how Armstrong could be used for maximum efficiency should have been happening, too.
If moving the 9th graders back to the high school is what’s best for those students – and we believe it is – we have no objection. What we are concerned with is how little thought appears to have been devoted to making the best use of Armstrong.
The taxpayers who are footing the bill for most of the $3.6 million in renovations at Armstrong deserve that; the students do too.
When officials speak in generalities as they have with the use of Armstrong, it makes us wonder if the school will ultimately become a hodge-podge repository of things to justify a two- or three-grade campus devoted instead to a single grade.
As it is, we fear Armstrong may become a pretty expensive junk drawer.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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