Starkville’s district consolidation is called the state’s most successful. County residents feel differently

By Devna Bose | Originally published by Mississippi Today

STARKVILLE — In marbled rooms at the State Capitol, conversations about school consolidation often lead to Oktibbeha County. 

Many state leaders consider the 2015 consolidation of the Starkville city public schools and Oktibbeha County schools a success story. 

That’s because the consolidation — which married a failing district in the county to one that was middling in the city — resulted in more money, a temporary enrollment bump, a new state-of-the-art school with expanded academic offerings and what is now an A-rated district.

But some locals might argue that account leaves out another part of its legacy: Every school that closed belonged to the county district, where 90% of students enrolled were Black. By comparison, the city schools were 30% white.

Jackie Ellis, 70, attended county schools and graduated from B.L. Moor High School, which later became East Oktibbeha High School. Now the old school is home to an events venue and a boutique motel. 

Every time Ellis drives by the motel, she feels what she lost.

Early resistance ends with shared mission

When the consolidation was first introduced — by lawmakers from Hattiesburg, no less — Starkville residents grumbled, Haley Montgomery recalls.

“The community was fairly blindsided,” said Montgomery, who at the time was a volunteer with the local public school parents’ group and freelanced for the school district. She now handles communications for Starkville Oktibbeha Consolidated School District. 

Starkville parents worried how consolidation with the state-managed Oktibbeha County School District would reshape their C-rated schools.

Families wanted a seat at the table and asked the Legislature to let locals take the lead. Lawmakers formed a committee of Oktibbeha County residents to recommend ways to improve education in their community.

The committee stumbled early on, when it proposed sending Oktibbeha students outside of the county. Rex Buffington, who led the committee, said the group was trying to shorten commutes for students who lived closer to neighboring school districts than to schools in Starkville.

But the proposal was perceived as a rejection of students. “And of course it was,” he said, acknowledging the misunderstanding. “Why didn’t we see that?”

Though painful, the incident helped change the committee’s perspective. No longer would they try to split up students. 

“These were all of our children,” Buffington said. “We were going to take responsibility for finding a plan to help children in both districts.”

When the committee visited the county schools, Buffington saw obvious disparities and, more importantly, the opportunities that lay before him.

“They didn’t have a lot of the extracurriculars that we take for granted,” he said. “I saw they were missing out on so much — in the classroom, yes, but even extracurricular activities. They didn’t have the things they needed and deserved. It was a moral issue to me.”

Many of the county students had grown up in the shadow of Mississippi State University but never visited the campus, Buffington said. The committee wanted to change that. 

The idea for the Partnership School was born. 

The university would partner with the district to train teachers at the campus, and would give sixth and seventh graders from across the county access to a sparkling new facility and extracurricular offerings that were previously unavailable to them, like an agriculture class and piano class.  

The school, lofty and spilling with light, opened in 2020 and serves 657 students on MSU’s campus. 

When history is erased

Orlando Trainer, who served as the county representative on the local consolidation committee, saw only benefits in merging the two districts. 

Trainer attended Starkville schools, but he and his wife, a graduate of the county schools, chose to send their daughter to Oktibbeha County schools for most of her education. Over time, Trainer saw how much help county schools needed — facilities in disrepair, limited extracurricular and academic opportunities and low student morale. 

Trainer, a county supervisor, considered the condition of the county schools as shameful, particularly with a university just a few miles away. 

“Consolidation for us was an act of redemption,” he said. “I only wish we had done it sooner.”

But for Ellis, the longtime Oktibbeha County resident and B.L. Moor High alumna, the loss of her school still hurts.

The only buildings that closed during consolidation belonged to the county district. Today, two former county buildings remain in use — an elementary school and another that’s an alternative school for students with behavioral problems.

East Oktibbeha High School was central to the community and a hub for civic life, Ellis said, including Juneteenth celebrations, ball games, fundraisers and concerts.

Julius Clark, a longtime Oktibbeha County Schools administrator before the consolidation, remembers the reaction when the closures were announced. 

“Of course, everyone felt that their children were being pushed aside or thrown into something that someone else wanted,” he said. 

Though Clark wishes those schools that were closed could have stayed in the community, he eventually came to support the consolidation. That’s because it gave county students access to extracurricular activities they didn’t have at their district, such as band and choir, and access to better resources, such as modern textbooks and technology. 

“They had been missing out on everything,” Clark said. “We didn’t have recognition or opportunities because of the money. Everything was based on money, and money is based upon your student body.”

Ellis, who works on historic preservation in Oktibbeha County, acknowledges that consolidation ultimately benefitted county students, improving their academic offerings and facilities through the Partnership Middle School. But she feels the community lost something important.

“The opportunity for the community to preserve (the East Oktibbeha school) property was given away to someone outside of the community,” she said. “It’s caused a great loss.”

A number of mementos such as class photos and trophies went missing during the consolidation, Ellis said. Some were found two years ago damaged or destroyed, she said. 

Artifacts that make up a school’s history and traditions are often overlooked during consolidation, said Carrie Hahnel, a senior associate with Bellwether, a national organization that works to improve education outcomes. 

Schools with more Black students are more likely to be closed, research shows. The logic of closing a predominantly Black school and moving students to a modern, well-equipped building makes sense, Hahnel said, it’s important to understand “that facility might be in disrepair because of a history of disinvestment.” 

A consolidation lesson: Listen to locals

In one Partnership School classroom in early September, Montgomery watched as seventh graders labeled vegetables on worksheets. Outside, a garden flourished under the summer sun. A fresh basket of sky blue eggs, gathered by students, sat on the counter.

“All things are difficult before they are easy,” read a cutout on the wall, a fitting reflection on the district’s consolidation.

For Montgomery, the consolidation was the right decision, one that ultimately brought the community together.

“There is something very special about serving your entire county,” she said. “If there were hurdles and challenges, our community is better for it.”

As state lawmakers consider consolidating more districts, Buffington hopes they learn from Starkville-Oktibbeha’s successes — as well as its failures.

Above all, he said, locals should lead the process.

“You should really put local people and parents, in particular, in the forefront of deciding how the consolidation can be shaped to best benefit the students,” Buffington said.

“That way the community has ownership of it,” he said, “and it’s not something that is done to them.”

For Ellis, the loss of her former school offers an important lesson: Communities should have a say in preserving their history.

On a sweltering afternoon in September, Ellis walked through the halls of her old high school, now an event space and motel. Her eyes lit up as she pointed out the gym and cafeteria.

“That school had been there for over 50 years,” she said. “It was like home to the community. It was like home to me. And that history has been erased.”

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article