Greeson: Mergers may be solution to aging Hamilton County high school facilities

It's been a little more than three weeks since everyone learned that the football stadium at East Ridge High School is unsafe.

The dilemma about who should fix the stadium has been discussed and debated.

Raymond James Stadium at East Ridge High School has been closed down due to structural problems with the home bleachers.

Before we get to that, I believe the state of Georgia has a much better system in place when it comes to school construction. Georgia school boards factor athletic fields and facilities into the costs of the projects and incorporate those expenses on the front end. Hamilton County, because of tightening budgets, pushed the majority of that freight to individual schools and those involved with those activities. In the long run, it's noticeably more expensive to piecemeal the project, but as with all things involving government spending, once the expense has been passed off, government sure won't take it back.

At one time, it seemed like a no-brainer to ask local towns and booster clubs to carry a sizable part of the athletic expenses. Friday nights in the fall used to be the buzz of every community. Sure there still are places - South Pittsburg and Rhea County quickly come to mind - where the aura and the mystique remain as bright as the lights of Friday night. That's a rarity now, the exception to the rule.

It's a problem that all sports face. There are too many other things to do. There's also football everywhere, with college football now playing on Friday night. Heck, if you wanted to, you could have watched two different area games last Friday night and listened to two more on the radio.

Smaller crowds are especially painful for high school football. Matched likely only by the pew on Sunday - and attendance is down there, too, sadly - the stands at East Ridge or Brainerd or Red Bank carried the connection of community and caring.

That's no more, and there are a litany of reasons. More kids going to private schools. Homeschooling. Aging communities whose interests understandably are more where their grandkids go to school and not where they sent their kids to high school. Shifting interest to other sports besides the all-mighty football.

Those will not change no matter who foots the bill to fix the East Ridge stadium conundrum.

And whether the Hamilton County Board of Education will say it or not, the home stands at East Ridge are not the real issue of this problem.

Jay Greeson

Last week, the board approved a motion to examine a half dozen more of the stadiums around the county. As most anyone who regularly goes to these venues can tell you, they are all in a state of disrepair, and they all are in need of serious financial help that no one can easily provide.

In truth, all the facilities - be they the main buildings, parking lots, trailers, stadiums, you name it - need some form of care. Most of the properties are generations old.

Forget where the players line up on Friday nights and think of where they spend each workday. There are dozens of projects on the horizon for the Hamilton County Schools. It's time for the county to look hard at combining some of these schools, especially some of the neighboring schools that have some of the worst facilities. The elephant in the room is there are too many small-to-mid-sized high schools in Hamilton County.

Sure, merging some of these schools will create uproar about community and tradition.

But if there was so much tradition and this great connection between community and these high schools, wouldn't the problems of the football stadiums have been addressed long before now? This is not about athletics vs. academics. This is about what can we afford and what has to be addressed, and our aging facilities are chief among them. It's time to look at the problems down the road instead of simply reacting to them.

Rather than waiting for more school buildings to be condemned, it's time we deal with the reality that we cannot afford to maintain and patchwork what we have.

That means mergers. And that means we have to plan to build rather than rebuilding a broken plan.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com and at 423-757-6343. His "Right to the Point" column appears on A2 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.