Grant Sowder

Parents and community members had little good to say Monday night about a potential combining of East Ridge and McBrien elementary schools into a new “megaschool.”

About 75 people turned up at East Ridge Elementary School to discuss the future of their facilities.

“I have petitions not just from your parents, but from your community. They don’t want this,” East Ridge parent Rhonda Brookshire told a panel that included Superintendent Jim Scales, County Commissioner Curtis Adams and school board Chairman Kenny Smith.

The Hamilton County Board of Education voted last year to replace the nearly 70-year-old East Ridge Elementary, and recently school administrators have suggested building the school large enough to accommodate McBrien Elementary students as well.

Staff Photo by Gillian Bolsover -- Five-year-old Madelene Moore, a prekindergarten student at McBrien Elementary, listens during Monday’s meeting at East Ridge Elementary to discuss a proposal to merge the two schools in a single new building.

Nearly 20 percent of students at McBrien are in portable classrooms, Dr. Scales said, which “is not a good use of taxpayer dollars.” There also is research, he said, to show that students in larger schools do just as well academically as those in smaller ones.

But East Ridge parent Stacey Linam said she is concerned that children like her own son, who takes special education classes, would not get the attention they need in a larger school.

“Some of these kids will be lost,” she said. “Some kids can just pick up and go with no problem, but others can’t.”

Grant Sowder, East Ridge’s parent-teacher association president, said people he’d talked to were most concerned about the safety of students in a large, combined school.

East Ridge Elementary currently has about 341 students while McBrien serves just under 500. The schools are located less than one mile apart.

Small schools have always been the pride of East Ridge, said Darlene Huckabee, whose son Jaxx is in fourth grade at East Ridge.

“East Ridge is a small community. That’s what makes it so strong,” she said.

Recently the small size of many Hamilton County elementary schools has come under fire by the County Commission. It would be cheaper, they said, to operate fewer big schools than to keep a larger number of schools with few students.

Hamilton County operates 12 elementary schools with fewer than 300 students.

Mr. Adams, who also serves as East Ridge’s city manager, said he thought combining schools was a good idea. Although many people think acquiring the old McBrien facility would be a good thing for the city of East Ridge, Mr. Adams said it would actually cost a fair amount of money to maintain.

If the schools merged and East Ridge got the old McBrien building, Mr. Adams said he didn’t know what the city would do with it. East Ridge Mayor Mike Steele had discussed a possible day care, Mr. Adams said.

A new, bigger school wasn’t appealing to first-grader Landry Hallorn, 7, whose mom, Cita, is the PTA president at McBrien.

“I don’t want it to be a megaschool,” he said. “Then we’d have different principals and different stuff.”

One supporter of the potential merger spoke up during the meeting.

Harriett Harris, a former East Ridge teacher, said the community needed to embrace what she considered to be an excellent opportunity.

“We cannot live in the past,” she said. “We’re very fortunate that this money is available to us in East Ridge, so I think we need to be supportive and we need to move on.”

A new East Ridge Elementary built to accommodate 600 students would cost $16 million, Dr. Scales said. A larger, merged school would cost about $22 million.

As the debate became more heated, Mr. Adams urged people to think about how excited everyone would be in several years once a new school was built that most East Ridge students could attend.

“You could take video of this meeting and play it three years from now and you wouldn’t even realize what you’re saying,” he said, eliciting groans and murmurs from the crowd.

A decision has not been made yet, Mr. Smith reminded everyone. Any proposals would have to go through the facilities committee before being approved by the entire board.

“This is not a done deal,” he said. “I’m straddling the fence because I can see it both ways right now.”

The school board on Thursday will vote on an architect for the new East Ridge School. Gary Waters, assistant superintendent for auxiliary services, said school officials would have to wait to tell the architect what size school for which to draw plans.

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