MANSFIELD — Prospect Elementary will not reopen for the 2022-2023 school year.
The Mansfield City School board voted unanimously to close Prospect during a board meeting Tuesday night.
The building closure is part of a district reconfiguration plan: Prospect will be merged with Woodland Elementary. Third-grade students from Woodland, Prospect and Sherman will all be moved to Malabar Intermediate School. The Pre-K program currently housed at Springmill STEM Elementary will move to Sherman Elementary, and Springmill STEM will expand to add sixth graders.
Supt. Stan Jefferson and board members have stated the district needs to close some of its aging facilities in the face of declining enrollment.
“The fewer campuses we have, the more efficient we can be and the more unified (student) experiences can be,” he said. “At the end of the day, we should be putting money into curriculum and instruction and not putting that money into repairs.
“The cost of repairs are exorbitant now based on what COVID has done.”
Board member Chris Elswick said he agreed with the decision to close Prospect.
“At the end of the day, we’re doing what’s best for the community,” he said. “Prospect is the school that needs to be closed because of the condition.”
Elswick said he regretted the confusion caused by presenting multiple plans to the community over the past two months.
“I’m not happy with the way it’s been handled,” he said. “I hope the community will bear with us, because we didn’t handle this the best way.”
Elswick also refuted a previous number shared by the administration, which told the board that closing an elementary school would result in a cost savings of about $65,000.
“It’s more like $400,000,” Elswick said.
Facilities director Robert Booth later confirmed that $400,000 was a better estimate of operational cost savings by closing a building.
Booth, who has been with the district 34 years, said Prospect Elementary was identified as the best candidate for building closure during an engineering study in 2018.
“I’ve not wavered from that,” he said. “Prospect was the building to come offline.”
While there are multiple aging buildings in the district, Booth said this winter has been especially hard on Prospect. The district put two extra layers on the roof in response to leaks, but those layers leaked as well. Booth said it likely would have cost $1 million to fix Prospect’s roof.
“You would have to tear all three layers off to replace that roof and it’s just not wise money to do that. Not knowing that we need to close a building,” he said.
Board members told the public it was a decision that was not taken lightly.
“I’ve had ties with Prospect — living in the neighborhood, my daughter went there, her friends went there,” said board president Sheryl Weber. “It isn’t easy, but we always want to do what’s best for our schools.”
Weber said the district will support staff, students and families through the transition.
“I guess we have to look at it this way: it could be a new beginning,” she added. “Maybe even a better beginning.”
