Rural Florida school closures raise concerns about choice and segregation

MADISON, Fla. (AP) — Tens of hundreds of scholars have left Florida public schools in recent times amid an explosion in 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, administrators are facing one other long-overlooked problem: the way to integrate students in buildings that remain segregated along racial and economic lines. separated.

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 associated fee of keeping the doors open. But the Madison County School District’s decision to achieve this 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 certainly one of the primary integrated classes at an area high school.

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

Fewer than 1,700 students remain in traditional public schools on this rural county within the state’s former cotton belt. Many families have moved to places with more jobs and housing — or have chosen other kinds of education. For those that remain, the colleges provide greater than just an education: All Madison students are eligible for free meals due to poverty rate within the county. 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, stating empty classroom after empty classroom.

One of the colleges slated to shut is Greenville Elementary School, which has fewer than 100 students, or about a 3rd of the school’s total student population. capabilityWhen Florida schools were officially segregated, Joseph attended classes at what was then called the Greenville Training School.

Generations of black residents cherish the school’s legacy small town from Greenville, where the music legend lives Ray Charles grew up.

More than 50 years after desegregation, the school remains to be operating 85% Black. Class size has declined because the school struggles to retain certified teachers. The school’s rankings have fluctuated across the state, but Greenville has received an “F” grade five times previously 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 12 months, Greenville will merge with Lee and Pinetta elementary schools, that are predominantly white. All those students will probably be sent to Madison County Central School, most of them are black The K-8 campus, which is a 15- to 20-minute drive from area elementary schools, has not yet announced which teachers will transfer to the combined school and which can lose their jobs.

School choice causes drop in enrollment

Madison County is situated an hour east of Tallahassee, in a region once dominated by cotton and tobacco plantations. The statue Confederate soldier still towers over Central Park within the county seat of Madison County.

The area has been wanting students for years because 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 a few of the area’s wealthiest families. Founded in 1970, Aucilla opened amid a wave of recent private schools across the South, founded by whites against integration. Scholars call them “segregation academies” and lots of them remain majority white. According to data from the 2021-2022 school 12 months, greater than 90% of Aucilla’s students were white federal data.

Madison families have opposed consolidation previously: In 1998, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights intervened when residents he opposed the plans send students from mostly white Lee Elementary to Central, a school that may soon accept elementary students from the county. After the department got involved, the district began implementing the plan.

Today, it might never have been easier to depart 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 usually serve multiple families. And now, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, all Florida students can qualify for taxpayer-funded vouchers value about $8,000 a 12 months to cover private school tuition, no matter 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 fairly the fame 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.

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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.