Greenville will close beloved middle school because of mold, HVAC problems and other safety concerns
By Leonardo Bevilacqua | Originally published by Mississippi Today
GREENVILLE — Greenville school district officials plan to close a school that is plagued with mold and leaks. Although leaders of the financially troubled district say the closure of Coleman Middle School is temporary, they are not saying how long repairs might take.
Superintendent Ilean Richards said at a school board meeting Thursday that she fears the state health department would shutter Coleman, which enrolled more than 200 students.
“Because we have not repaired that roof, it’s literally raining in the school,” she told a board room packed with community members. She said it’s raining to the point that ceiling tiles, which were installed in the most recent renovation, are falling down.
“Children should not have to go to school in that kind of condition,” Richards told an audience of Coleman alumni. “If we want to keep Coleman, we’re going to have to stop and fix it.”
District leaders did not disclose when repairs would begin, and it’s unclear how the district would fund renovations. The new school year starts on Aug. 5.
Greenville schools faced a series of financial setbacks in the past year. Leadership must properly account for more than $4 million in pandemic relief money or pay the sum back to the state education department in addition to paying roughly $500,000 in misreported tax withholdings to the Internal Revenue Service.
The second floor of Coleman cannot be used due to the leaking roof, Richards said. School staff have to wipe away mold on walls after rain, she told community members.
The school’s library also cannot be used in part because of mold, Richards said.
Coleman’s auditorium underwent renovations in the last five years with the addition of air conditioning, but the gym sometimes gets too hot to use.
“So we can’t kick the can down the road because we don’t have a road to kick the can down,” board secretary Allison Washington said. She pushed for the board to choose a site for those students with enough time for parents to buy school-specific uniforms and prepare for the first day of classes.
The board agreed to tour nearby Armstrong Elementary School on Friday to vet it as a temporary location for Coleman students. Board member Oliver Johnson wanted to ensure Coleman students attend a school in their neighborhood.
“We have had a number of schools on this side of town that just closed,” he said.
The board room was packed on Thursday evening with over two dozen Coleman alumni who voiced concerns about the board shuttering a storied community institution. Coleman was the city’s Black high school during segregation and won multiple state football championships.
Glenn Davis, who was forced to transfer to the newly integrated Greenville high school his senior year in 1971, still vividly recalls Friday night football games when the whole community would pack the field behind Coleman. Davis said Coleman was known as far away as California for its athleticism and school spirit.
“This school is a legacy,” Davis said. “The whole community had pride. That field out by the school used to be packed all the way around inside for games. Everybody would come.”
Other alumni were upset to see their beloved alma mater in a state of disrepair. They said it was proof that leaders had not properly cared for it over the years.
“And now they let the school get so bad and they got to close it down. That’s crazy,” Coleman alum Kevin January said. “They already took so much money to keep it up.”
He said he also worries that combining middle schoolers from different sides of town will lead to more fights. The concern was echoed by other community members when Richards took questions from the audience.
At the meeting’s close, Richards asked for volunteers to help make Coleman last another 100 years. She specifically called for the rusted fence that runs the perimeter of the campus to be torn down. Several parents and alumni signed their name to a sheet of loose leaf paper to help out on a future date.
“It shouldn’t be looking like that in front of Coleman. That says: We don’t care anything about this school,” Richards said of the dilapidated fence. “We can’t keep it going. And that’s where it is. And you pass by it every day. So you have children in there.”
January was motivated to advocate for his alma mater on Thursday. He had many fond memories of the football and basketball teams. He said it was one of the places in the city, which he most associated with his childhood. Many of his friends from those years are still his closest friends.
He also hopes his mother, who is a school employee, will be able to keep her job.
For some alumni, the board meeting was an opportunity to reminisce with classmates about the Greenville they knew.
Joanne Fisher, a Coleman alum and retired teacher, remembers Charles Petty, a stern but passionate history teacher who always wore a suit. She said the energy inside the building was joyful even though teachers were strict.
“Children wanted to come to school,” she recalled. “You went in there to do your work. It was family oriented.”
Fisher has seen a beloved school close before. She attended the Ray Brooks School, a Benoit school that was closed in 2020. She said it was troubling to hear of vandalism at the former school building. She also hated to see it ransacked and desecrated.
West Bolivar High School in Rosedale faced a similar fate after its closure in 2021. A jersey, trophy, football helmet as well as other memorabilia were stolen from the abandoned building this past year. Many composites still hang from decaying walls inside the historic school building.
Fisher is hopeful the school district will rebuild. She says that Greenville locals are resilient, and if any cause could bring the community together, this could be it.
“When I was there, we all got along,” she recalled of her time at Coleman. “I think the district could bounce back with everybody working together to rebuild it. It’s not going to have to start with the school district. It’s got to be all of us.”
This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Source: Original Article
