Final bell to toll for some Huntsville schools

on January 31, 2010 at 7:15 AM

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. _ More than 150 years of Huntsville education tradition will come to an end when historic Lincoln and East Clinton schools close this summer.

The closings, approved Thursday night by the city school board, are part of a citywide school consolidation plan that had been recommended by a task force.

The closings are a sad step for the neighborhoods losing their schools but a necessary one for the system as a whole. School officials estimate millions of dollars of savings next school year from reduced payroll, utility and maintenance costs.

The next crucial step is finding a use for the abandoned school sites. Nothing would be worse than letting them decay, dragging surrounding property values down with them.

Six city schools were merged into three this year, resulting in the closing of Terry Heights and West Huntsville elementary and Stone Middle. Almost a year later, those buildings still sit empty.

Beginning this fall, Lincoln students will attend Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary a mile or so north of Lincoln and East Clinton students will attend Blossomwood Elementary roughly a mile east.

Lincoln School, which opened in 1929, has only 154 students. East Clinton, built in 1938, has just 135 students. Smaller enrollments may provide better learning environments. But they're too costly to continue in today's financial climate.

Extra efforts should be made to ensure that students in the combined schools get a solid academic experience.

The board approved the East Clinton and Lincoln mergers 4-1 with school board member Topper Birney casting the dissenting vote. Birney said closing Lincoln would unravel what became one of the state's biggest educational success stories: students overcoming the disadvantages of poverty through the help of dedicated tutors, teachers and church volunteers.

The support is led by Lincoln Village Ministries, formed from a collection of churches, which refurbished homes in nearby Lincoln Village and helped needy families in other ways.

Volunteers over several years coached Lincoln students into rising far above expectations.
There's no reason to believe Lincoln supporters won't continue their outreach at MLK. But they'll likely need more help to assist more students.

Board members approved the closures with the hope the school's successes will expand to MLK, which will grow to roughly 450 students.

Moving MLK to Lincoln wasn't practical because of Lincoln's size and the age. The school system owns additional acreage next to MLK if an expansion is ever needed.

East Clinton's merger into Blossomwood would bump total enrollment there to about 440 students, requiring the addition of portable classrooms.

The board had previously committed $18 million to build a new Blossomwood, but the project has no estimated date of completion.The merger vote, a year earlier than projected, could accelerate building plans.
Enrollment shifts and financial challenges force school systems to make sometimes unpopular decisions.

The consolidations are the bitter fruits of reality for a school system that must adjust to changing demographics.

Cost savings may be driving the mergers. But the financial gains won't matter if student performance suffers as a result.

By John Peck for the editorial board. E-mail: