Some members of the White County School Board believe it is time to look for ways to re-purpose the old Central View Elementary building.
This comes on the heels of the White County Sheriff’s Office requesting access to the building to use it as a training facility. School Board Member Jayson McDonald said there’s been a lot of community opinions on how to move forward.
“It’s been used as storage for the school system, which has worked out really well,” McDonald said. “But I think now the right opportunity has presented itself to us with the Sheriff’s Department to be able to help the Sheriff’s Department work on active shooter training.”
The Sheriff’s Office is also looking to turn the building into a substation for the Central View community. Several years ago, the community suggested to the school board that the school be reopened or the building be turned into a community center. School Board Member Lisa Officer said that though she is still fairly new to the board, she understands the situation.
“A lot of feelings, very strong feelings, do surround that particular building,” Officer said. “I think that if we are able to put a substation for our Sheriff’s Office down there and use that to increase the safety and security for that part of our county, I think we should do it.”
McDonald said when Central View initially closed, an estimated 72 students were projected to be attending the school. McDonald said the school board looks at the numbers every year, and that recent numbers showed the school would have had an estimated 67 students and zero fifth graders. McDonald said reopening Central View Elementary financially would not make sense.
“You would have to have a full cafeteria staff, full office staff, all the teachers,” McDonald said. “I mean, you are gonna talk in excess of close to a $1 million to run the school for a year when you’ve got two other schools probably within five miles of that school that they could be zoned to go to, just like we are doing now with Doyle and Cassville.”
McDonald and Officer said the school board has not been approached with any other serious inquiries for repurposing the building.
A memorandum of understanding needs to be approved by the school board in order to allow the Sheriff’s Office to repurpose the building. McDonald said an important piece of the memorandum of understanding is that the school board can retain control of the building should a better purpose be proposed.
“We can reclaim the building if we see the need that we are going to reopen that school,” McDonald said. “We would give the Sheriff’s Office a 90-day written notice that we are gonna be taking the building back. So there is still an opportunity for that school to open back up in the future if the need arises and the children present themselves down there.”
School Board Chairman Bob Young said the board is always open to other ideas of how the community could best use the building.
