MADISON, Fla. (AP) — Tens of hundreds of students have left Florida public schools in recent times amid an explosion at school choice, and now districts large and small are grappling with the financial strain of empty seats in aging classrooms.

As some districts face school closures, school administrators are facing one other long-overlooked problem: tips on how to integrate students in racially and economically segregated buildings.

In northwest Florida, one small district plans to merge its last three independent elementary schools into one campus since it doesn’t have enough students to cover the fee of keeping the doors open. But the Madison County School District’s decision to accomplish that has exposed racial tensions in a community where some white families have opposed public school integration for years.

“It’s a taboo subject that no one wants to talk about,” county school board member Katie Knight told The Associated Press.

“At the end of the day, these kids are going to have to interact with all people, regardless of race, ability, personality type,” she said. “Trying to segregate our kids is not an option.”

Segregation, integration, consolidation

Shirley Joseph grew up in segregated schools in Florida and was a black student in a single of the primary integrated classes at a neighborhood highschool.

Now, as superintendent of Madison County Public Schools, her job is to shut some of them.

In this rural county within the state’s former cotton belt, fewer than 1,700 students remain in traditional public schools. Many families have moved to places with more jobs and housing — or have chosen other types of education. For those that remain, the schools provide greater than just an education: All Madison students qualify at no cost meals because of the county’s poverty rate. One in three children there lives in poverty.

“If we want to survive as a district,” Joseph said, “we have to make tough decisions.”

Earlier this month, Joseph walked through elementary school hallways on a recent first day of school, mentioning empty classroom after empty classroom.

One of the schools slated to shut is Greenville Elementary, which has fewer than 100 students — a few third of its capability. When Florida schools were officially segregated, Joseph attended classes there at what was then called the Greenville Training School.

Generations of black residents cherish the legacy of the college within the small town of Greenville where legendary musician Ray Charles grew up.

More than 50 years after desegregation, the college continues to be 85 percent black. Class sizes have shrunk as the college struggles to retain certified teachers. The school’s grades have fluctuated across the state, but Greenville has received an “F” grade five times prior to now decade for low student achievement rates.

When an Associated Press reporter visited recently, fourth-grade teacher Mannika Hopkins had just eight students in her class.

“I hate that it’s closing. It’s my heart. It’s our community. … It’s us,” Hopkins said. “Who wants to move to a community that doesn’t have a school nearby?”

Starting next yr, Greenville will merge with Lee and Pinetta elementary schools, which have mostly white students. All those students shall be sent to Madison County Central School, a mostly black K-8 campus that could be a 15- to 20-minute drive from the realm elementary schools. The district has not yet announced which teachers will transfer to the merged school and which is able to lose their jobs.

School choice causes drop in enrollment

Madison County is an hour east of Tallahassee, in a region once dominated by cotton and tobacco plantations. A Confederate soldier monument still looms over the central park within the county seat of Madison.

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The area has been short of students for years as the birth rate drops, businesses close and families move to places with more jobs outside the lumber industry, trucking and jobs on the nearby state prison.

Other families remained but simply left public schools.

For a long time, Aucilla Christian Academy in neighboring Jefferson County has attracted some of the realm’s wealthiest families. Founded in 1970, Aucilla opened amid a wave of recent private schools across the South, founded by white people against integration. Academics call them “segregation academies,” and many remain majority white. In the 2021-2022 school yr, greater than 90% of Aucilla’s students were white, in line with federal data.

Madison families have opposed consolidation prior to now: In 1998, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights stepped in when residents opposed plans to send students from mostly white Lee Elementary to Central, a college that may soon accept elementary students from the county. After the department got involved, the district moved forward with the plan.

Today, it could never have been easier to go away Florida’s public schools behind. The chaos of COVID-19 has forced many families to try homeschooling or micro-schooling — small, private learning environments that always serve multiple families. And now, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, all Florida students can qualify for taxpayer-funded vouchers value about $8,000 a yr to cover private school tuition, regardless of household income.

For families against Madison consolidation, Aucilla is a possible destination, as is Madison Creative Arts Academy, a public charter school.

The parents of 9-year-old Noel Brouillette are hopeful she’s going to get a spot on the academy. It’s not about race, said her mother, Nicole Brouillette, but relatively the popularity of the Black Central school, which has more fights. If Noel doesn’t get into the charter school, the family could leave Madison County altogether.

The fourth-grade student is devastated that she will’t stay at Pinetta Elementary School.

“If I had never come here, I would never have met my best friend,” she said.

Other parents are considering homeschooling, like Alexis Molden. She said her sons love going to Lee Elementary, but she’s heard rumors about Central — that multiracial kids like hers are bullied there.

“I’ve heard that… it’s basically segregation,” Molden said. “You have white kids, black kids, and then the mixed kids have to decide which side they’re going to be on.”

School board member Katie Knight said if she had a dollar for each rumor she heard about Central, she could retire.

However, the county has its own history.

When Shirley Joseph, the present principal of Madison County High School, a long time ago, said her students would sort themselves as they entered her classroom — white kids on one side, black kids on the opposite — until she told them to change seats.

“We have to figure out, somehow, ‘How do we connect communities?’” Joseph said.

There’s all the time talk of leaving public schools, Joseph said, but she believes most families will stay. In the meantime, she’s focused on providing the very best education possible to the scholars she has — those that can’t leave.