MANSFIELD — The Mansfield City Schools board of education will likely vote next month on whether to close the Brinkerhoff building.
Supt. Stan Jefferson proposed a district restructuring plan to the board Tuesday, less than two years after the board voted to close Prospect Elementary School.
The Brinkerhoff building is located at 240 Euclid Avenue. It currently houses Mansfield Spanish Immersion.
Under Jefferson’s proposed changes, Mansfield Spanish Immersion would move into the Woodland Elementary building going into the 2024-2025 school year. Woodland Elementary would be dissolved and students would be relocated to Springmill STEM Elementary and John Sherman Elementary.
Jefferson said abandoning the Brinkerhoff building would lead to more efficient use of district spaces, reduce heating and cooling bills and eliminate costly repairs for the aging building.
“Part of the role of the district is to be very cautious and very astute with our taxpayers’ dollars and at the same, educating our students,” Jefferson said.
He also said combining Woodland with the district’s other elementary schools would allow educators to better collaborate and share resources, but that staffing wouldn’t change.
“We are not going to do any form of a reduction in force,” Jefferson said.
Board president Renda Cline voiced her support the plan.
“We want to continue to maximize the tax dollars that we have in order to give the children the best educational experience that they can have, and this is the way to do it,” she said.
“We don’t want to have everyone stretched so thinly and right now, we’re stretched pretty thinly amongst the buildings and we all realize that.”
Cline cited the district’s bus driver shortage as an example.
“Everybody gets the updates, everybody gets the call offs for not having the transportation because of busing issues,” she said. “It’s definitely something that all of us have seen coming with the size of Mansfield changing.”
Jefferson cited declining enrollment as part of his rationale for recommending the closure of Prospect Elementary last year.
“The fewer campuses we have, the more efficient we can be and the more unified (student) experiences can be,” Jefferson said during a meeting in March 2022.
“At the end of the day, we should be putting money into curriculum and instruction and not putting that money into repairs.”
Jefferson said school district needs “21st century learning facilities”
Jefferson first suggested closing the Brinkerhoff building and relocating Spanish Immersion to Woodland Elementary in January 2022. The board ultimately went in a different direction, opting to close Prospect instead.
The building was demolished last summer.
Jefferson was unable to provide an estimate Tuesday night of how much the district would save by closing the Brinkerhoff building.
“We have not actually talked about numbers as of yet,” he said.
Jefferson said taking another elementary building “offline” is part of the district’s overall strategic plan to offer 21st century learning facilities.
He said he’d share more about that goal with the board in January.
