The false promise of consolidation in West Bolivar schools: ‘It takes a toll’

By Leonardo Bevilacqua | Originally published by Mississippi Today

SHAW — Cassandra Phillips hates to see the old Ray Brooks School building rotting off Highway 1. 

To local lawmakers and residents, it was the best maintained public schoolhouse in Bolivar County. The one structure connected to a gymnasium with a vaulted ceiling and glossy wooden floors and a cafeteria with cushioned booths in maraschino red.

Now, vines hang where school banners did. Shelves and desks lie rusted and mangled in the abandoned breezeway, and wires stripped of their copper lay limp from behind shattered doors and windows.

The Ray Brooks School, which served grades K-12, was a casualty of a 2014 consolidation between Benoit’s school district and those in Rosedale and Shaw. 

But the community lost more than a school. Families had gathered at the building for repasts, impromptu kickball tournaments and youth mentoring. They could attend a football game or pick up a child without making a 20-minute drive — the typical amount of time it takes now to get to school in Shaw. 

Now, former Ray Brooks Tigers, including Phillips, cheer for the Shaw Warriors, their pre-consolidation rivals. But that harmony that took six years to achieve is at risk again.

State lawmakers are considering another consolidation in Bolivar County, which has three districts: North Bolivar, West Bolivar and Cleveland. The details of lawmakers’ new consolidation plans are not yet clear, and  the promises of cost savings and better schools from the last one have fallen far short of expectations. Schools have closed, buildings have deteriorated and turmoil has plagued the resulting district. 

“Benoit has lost so much,” Phillips said.

Taking the fight against consolidation to Jackson

In January 2012, Beverly Culley, Benoit’s superintendent, addressed lawmakers to argue against consolidation. She handed packets detailing district budgets and student test scores.

She brought students, too. They sang a hymn. She made an impassioned speech and listed off the district’s high test scores relative to its neighbors. Benoit was one of the best performing school districts in the Mississippi Delta. The district had minimal debt. The community needed its schools.

“They didn’t listen,” Culley said. “They had all the data. But none of that mattered because they were going to do what they were going to do.”

Evelyn Henry, who served on the Shaw school board before the consolidation, was also present that session, but with a different pitch. She presented a binder with the total cost of unaddressed maintenance issues in Shaw schools, which was steep, she recalled. 

She hoped if lawmakers did go through with consolidation, they would consider consolidation with Cleveland, which had a larger tax base and was closer in distance.

“We had to realize something was going to happen,” Henry said of the board’s attempt to negotiate. “I just wish we could have had somebody to help us before we went to Jackson so we looked like a unified front.”

Neither Culley or Henry’s wishes were honored, both now saying their fears were realized.

‘We just couldn’t sit down and just make it work’

The consolidated West Bolivar school board would be tasked with fixing crumbling infrastructure in Rosedale and Shaw with little money. Lawmakers chose three communities with some of the lowest tax bases in the state to combine, which Henry felt set them up for failure.

The consolidated districts saved roughly $400,000 in administrative costs, much less than lawmakers’ claims the move would save up to  $1.6 million.

Jackie Lloyd, who has represented Rosedale schools on the West Bolivar board since consolidation, recalled getting little technical assistance from the state Education Department after the districts merged. She said pooling the different schools’ resources and then dispersing them equitably was particularly challenging.

The districts had a combined $1.48 million in debt coming into the consolidation. West Bolivar School District, based in Rosedale, owed more than $1 million. Benoit’s district only owed $40,000.

Henry, who represented Shaw on the consolidated school board until 2020, had the same observation as Lloyd. She felt each community’s representatives were only interested in measures that would benefit their schools. The board increasingly failed to reach consensus, and gridlock on votes became common.

Five years and four superintendents later, Henry observed a more aggressive school board whose actions were fueled by the increasing polarization. According to a 2020 lawsuit Culley filed against the district and board members, board members aggressively bullied and harassed her. She alleged the behavior started soon after she was appointed superintendent of the consolidated district in 2017.

The district settled out of court in 2020 for an undisclosed amount for alleged behavior that U.S. District Court Judge Michal P. Mills called “distasteful.”

In Shaw, district consolidation meant no high school, no band

While videos of board members’ quarrels reached viewers on Facebook, district infrastructure continued to crumble. Two district high school buildings were eventually condemned: Shaw in 2018 and West Bolivar in Rosedale in 2020. As a result, Shaw High students attend classes at the elementary school building.

For Shelia Ratliffe, a Shaw alum, budget cuts at the school mean her children missed out on extracurriculars. 

At the Sept. 14 football game, Ratliffe pointed to the old Shaw High school gym, where she remembered majorette and band practices took place. She remembered the pride the community felt for Shaw’s band, when they had one.

Failing infrastructure and fewer extracurricular offerings weren’t inevitable, Henry said. The Shaw school board received a grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to renovate the high school building prior to consolidation. A crew from Jackson provided an on-site inspection along with a project overview in 2013, she recalled.

Later, the consolidated school board and a series of superintendents never prioritized the project. Instead, they abandoned the historic high school and relocated its students to the McEvans Elementary building.

In 2020, the West Bolivar Consolidated school board, now dominated by representatives from Shaw and Rosedale — and one from Benoit — voted to close Ray Brooks, too.

“It made no sense,” Culley, the former Benoit superintendent, recalled. 

The district installed two portable toilets by the concession stand for spectators and players alike in lieu of a field house at Shaw High’s football field. 

“Our community, Shaw, just really started feeling like the ugly child,” said Henry of upkeep projects that went ignored at her alma mater. She said she paid for McEvans school sign out of pocket to replace an old, decrepit one, and the board moved slowly on other Shaw priorities. 

Communities adjust to playing on the same team

Zalia Sanders, a Benoit native and a senior at Shaw High, was miles away from home at the Aug. 28 matchup between Leland and Shaw. But the rural community on a bayou has become a second home for her. She, along with three other students, said Shaw and Benoit have come together despite a tumultuous consolidation in 2014.

At the game, she stood by the fence with her older sister, Ja’khyria Williams, who is a college freshman. They reflected on what became common in the wake of consolidation: student fights.

She said the rivalry between Rosedale and her native Benoit can be fierce — a  feud that stretches back to the 1980s, long before her time in school. 

There was an uptick in fighting between Rosedale and Shaw youth in the years after the consolidation in the late 2010s and in 2024, Rosedale Police Chief Aaron Malone recalled. But while he remembers some dispatches last year related to disputes, this year has been mostly quiet.

The catalyst can be as small as an unfriendly look or as big as allegations of romantic infidelity, Sanders said. 

Still, she said, she loves Shaw High. She got more comfortable at Shaw schools through joining the volleyball team, she says. 

“When you’re playing on the same team, you get to know each other as people.”

Shaw, the town miles down the country highway, no longer feels so foreign, she said. But between board members weighing another school closure and consolidation talk in Jackson, students like her might be sent to yet another community for school.

Shaw residents don’t want to reopen the wounds of consolidation

Arika Williams, a Benoit native, was wrapping up her shift in the concession stand.

By the fourth quarter, she was counting cash from the stand’s register beneath the hum of an electronic fan. Her brows knitted beneath her tortoiseshell-framed eyeglasses as she shifted to counting the remaining stock of chips and sodas.

“If we can all work together and go in the direction we’re going, I think we can all be successful,” Williams said. Initially, she worried consolidation could mean her son would miss out on extracurricular opportunities in Shaw and spend too much time on a school bus.

The big Delta sky had gone black by the fourth quarter. The headlights of old Silverados lit up reflective workmans’ vests in the dark streets by the field. Some were trying to catch the game’s last moments after getting off work.

In the past, some of the Shaw Warriors’ biggest boosters were Ray Brooks Tigers. Ray Brooks alumni, Lajaruis Jaron among them, said they know the importance of community more than anyone in the county. They know how losing schools and football victories can fracture a community. 

During the football game, he leaned forward to watch a Warrior nab the ball. He cheered. The player ran the ball to the end zone. Two students sprinted school flags by the edges of the field. 

Shaw scored again.

Jarone said he attends each season’s game whether home or away. He owns multiple maroon and yellow T-shirts. He couldn’t imagine autumn without a Warriors football game. 

“When the bus moves, I move,” he said.

Jarone attended Ray Brooks School, not Shaw, but like Williams and Phillips and Sanders, he said he’s found a new home. He’d hate for another district consolidation to force students to find another one.

“I hope consolidation doesn’t happen to these kids like it did to us because it will take a toll,” he said. “This is how it’s always been for small communities. The odds have always been stacked against us.”

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

Source: Original Article