Two Grundy County elementary schools with a combined age of 146 years need major renovation or even replacement to address space shortages and fire code violations.
Building new schools to replace Coalmont and Palmer elementaries could cost millions, officials say, but renovating the existing buildings to meet needs and codes will be costly, too.
Meanwhile, the county also is wrestling with whether to renovate or rebuild its aging county jail.
School officials will meet for a workshop Thursday and plan a series of meetings with Grundy County commissioners to discuss school solutions.
Fire inspections from 2009 list 11 violations at Palmer Elementary and 21 at Coalmont, ranging from a lack of fire-rated walls to not having emergency exit doors from classrooms to the outside.
Some violations require immediate fixes. For others, the school system must submit an action plan to the state.
Grundy County Director of Schools Jody Hargis said he believes there are "eight to 10 options" for the two schools. He said officials want to hear ideas from the community.
DOCUMENTSPDF: Palmer Plan of Corrective ActionPDF: Palmer Plan of Corrective Action approvalPDF: Coalmont Plan of Corrective ActionPDF: Coalmont Plan of Corrective Action approval
"It's going to take sitting down and surveying all the options we might have. We need to take the passion out as much as possible and try to look at it realistically," Hargis said last week.
Despite the age of the present schools and the attraction of new buildings, the old schools are important to their communities because they represent history, Hargis said.
Palmer is 84 years old and Coalmont is 62, and both schools are part of the county's history and culture, Hargis said.
Reports show that neither school has a sprinkler system, though their ages mean the schools are exempt from that requirement as long as smoke detectors are used.
Classrooms for the lower grades are very small by modern standards - some hold as few as a dozen students - and handicapped access is limited, though those issues don't fall under fire codes, Hargis said. He was principal at Coalmont until recently being appointed director.
"'Overcrowded' could be a term used but it's just basically because of the size of the structure," he said. "It [Coalmont] is probably the fifth-largest school [in the county] in terms of the structure, but it's third-largest in population."
Coalmont Principal Russell Ladd said art classes have to be held on the stage in the auditorium.
"We're having to house a lot of our children in portables," he said, and many teachers make do with temporary arrangements because of the lack of space.
At Palmer, classrooms lack emergency exits leading outside. Students must evacuate to interior hallways in order to get out of the building, Hargis said.
AGING SCHOOLS
Carol Trickler teaches a fourth-grade class at Coalmont Elementary in Grundy County. A state fire inspector found fire code violations at this school and at Palmer Elementary, and cash-strapped school leaders are searching for solutions.When the schools in Coalmont and Palmer were relatively modern - in the 1940s and 1950s - dozens of small schools were scattered across the county, officials said. A clipping from the Grundy County Herald's Dec. 11, 1941, edition lists 37 schools as participants in local Parent Teacher Association activities.
The schools - with names like Flat Branch, Freemont, Northcutts Cove, Panhandle, Shook and Utah - were mostly within walking distance for students, officials said.
Many of those schools have long since closed, but in communities where the old campuses still are in use, residents want to keep them.
"They ought to keep it on account of the location and who it took to build it," said lifelong resident Willie D. Meeks, who was pinning down a stool at McCullough Auto Parts counter in Palmer.
Meeks, 75, said Palmer and Coalmont and the forgotten schools were in many cases the product of the county's coal-mining industry.
"Palmer was built with a lot of help from the miners," he said. "My daddy worked in the mines for 50-something years."
Across the counter, 24-year-old Tyler McCullough, who went to Palmer from 1990 to 1998, echoed Meeks' concern for historical preservation.
"They could build onto it or add something, but they need to keep it. It's the oldest school in the county," McCullough said of Palmer Elementary.
Abe Valdes has lived in Grundy for eight years with his wife, a substitute teacher.
Valdes said his wife loves working at the schools because the staffs work so hard with the children. He said both schools are still good facilities and are worth fixing.
PATH TO A SOLUTION
IF YOU GOThe Grundy County Board of Education will hold a workshop at 6 p.m. CST Thursday followed by its regular meeting at 7 p.m. CST. The meeting will be at Grundy County High School, 24970 State Route 108, in Coalmont, Tenn.
"I'm excited about being the principal whatever new thing happens," Palmer Elementary Principal Willie Childers said as kindergartners streamed past his office door last week.
"It was scary at first not knowing if they were going to close us down," he said, referring to the fire inspection reports.
County Mayor Lonnie Cleek said county commissioners, like the community, are "kind of torn" over how to preserve history and still solve problems with the least impact on taxpayers.
"[Commissioners] know it's a serious issue, and they know it's more than just a few fire code violations at stake," he said.
CLASS NOTES
Coalmont Elementary School
Built: 1948
Principal: Russell Ladd
Teachers: 30
Students: 320
Address: 7862 State Route 56, Coalmont, Tenn.
Fire inspection violations in 2009: 21
Palmer Elementary School
Built: 1927
Principal: Willie Childers
Teachers: 14
Students: 220
Address: 226 School Road, Palmer, Tenn.
Fire inspection violations in 2009: 11
Source: Grundy County Schools