MANSFIELD — Administrators from Mansfield City Schools appear to be pumping the brakes on a new district reconfiguration plan.
Superintendent Stan Jefferson announced a revised proposal during Tuesday night’s school board meeting, which he called a “phased” approach. Only Phase One, which could take effect next school year with board approval, was discussed in detail.
The updated proposal was a scaled-back version of one presented last month.
Phase One still calls for moving third-grade students from Woodland, Sherman and Prospect Elementaries to Malabar Intermediate School. It also includes moving the district’s pre-kindergarten program to the Sherman building and making Springmill STEM Elementary a K thru 6th grade school.
The revised Phase One plan does not include relocating students from Mansfield Spanish Immersion to the Woodland building and Mansfield Middle School.
Jefferson said he and members of the district’s administrative team met with staff, students and families to further review the initial plan proposed on Jan. 25. Meetings took place on Jan. 31, Feb. 7 and Feb. 14, as well as a virtual meeting on Jan. 31 and Feb. 9.
“The original proposal has been amended based on feedback received from these events,” Jefferson said. “The administration of MCS takes seriously the input received from its community and is committed to making the transitions as simple as possible for all parties involved.”
“There’s there’s been a lot of stakeholders involved in this process. I believe that the process that we are presenting is doable.”
The board will vote on whether or not to approve the revised plan at a special meeting on Feb. 22.
Jefferson said a second, Phase Two plan will likely be announced sometime during the 2022-2023 school year. He and other administrators want to gather more feedback from community stakeholders.
“Dividing this work into two phases allows time to further engage the community, consider additional options and review needs of the district,” Jefferson said. “It also makes the large-scale project more manageable with current labor and supply-chain challenges.”
Despite breaking the plan into phases, Jefferson made it clear that keeping all of the district’s current facilities up and running simply isn’t sustainable.
“We know that we must address our facilities in the Mansfield City Schools. There’s no doubt about that,” he said. “We need to consolidate our resources. We will have to take some type of building offline. We need to build a 21st-century facility.”
Jefferson added that he knows what those transitions are like. He was a teacher when Malabar High School was consolidated into Mansfield Senior High School. He was a principal when the old Mansfield Senior High building closed and a new one was built.
Board member Gary Feagin asked Jefferson how much time had been spent on the original facilities reconfiguration plan. Jefferson said administrators began working on that plan about six months ago.
He added the original plan was based on numerous studies commissioned by the district. Those studies included an engineering study by Dynamix Energy Services (now Veregy) in 2018, a capacity building report by Fanning Howey in 2019, and an education facility planning study by FutureThink in 2020.
Goals from the district’s new strategic planning effort were also considered.
Feagin said he wants the district’s facilities planning to be informed by the new strategic plan, which cost the district nearly $50,000 to develop.
“We just spent $50,000 to get this five-year plan,” Feagin said. “I don’t want to spend $50,000 and put this record on the shelf.
“We have to engage ourselves in that document. We have to use it.”
Board member Chris Elswick said community members should not be surprised there are changes coming to the district’s building layout.
“As each one of the studies were completed, there was a public presentation made to the board, to the community,” he said. “None of this should be a surprise to anybody. This is something we’ve been working on for three or four years now.
“Every step of the way, we’ve made a public presentation. We’ve invited everyone’s input.”
Board member Renda Cline said she understood why members of the public would be disappointed to see old school buildings close, but that the district must consider the operating expenses that come with aging facilities.
“I know no one likes to see a building go offline that is important to their own families and important to the communities, but to (Jefferson’s) point, we do want to have a 21st-century building,” she said. “We have to make sure that we’re being fiscally responsible and that we’re not trying to stretch ourselves too thin.
“I just hope moving forward that we really have some serious conversations about ‘How much does it cost to keep open a building that we want to be open?
“Why is it most beneficial for the students? ‘Because we’re talking about the students’ experiences. The adults can go wherever they want, children can’t go wherever they want and we owe it to them to give them the best that we can.”
