Newman: Consider combining St. John’s, Rosenwald
St. John’s Elementary School in Darlington. The school has a vast number of alumni. A school of some type has operated at this site since 1818. FILE PHOTO/NEWS & PRESS
Rosenwald Elementary/Middle School in Society Hill. Attendance here has been steadily dropping, according to Darlington County Education Superintendent Tim Newman. DCSD PHOTO
By Bobby Bryant, Editor
editor@newsandpress.net
Darlington County Education Superintendent Tim Newman is asking the school board to consider combining two beloved schools – Darlington’s aging St. John’s Elementary and Society Hill’s dwindling Rosenwald Elementary/Middle – into a new facility.
Newman said the idea could save the school district $2 million a year in school-operating costs. But it could trigger intense debate, since St. John’s has 200 years of history behind it and Rosenwald is the only school in the Society Hill area and has strong ties to black history in the community.
A new school to absorb the student populations at St. John’s and Rosenwald, Newman said at the board’s Feb. 14 meeting, would probably cost about $30 million and probably take two years to build. But Newman said taxpayers would not take a hit: “We have the money to be able to do this.”
School board chairman Warren Jeffords added: “We are not talking about any tax increase at all. We’d be using money we have accumulated over the last few years,” partly by deferring projects and partly because state and federal COVID-aid funds have been flowing to the district.
“What are you asking of us right now?” board member Leigh Anne Kelley asked.
Newman said he was only asking board members to start conversations about the concept. Newman said there would be more “conversations with our communities” about the schools’ future if the proposal proceeds. “This is the first of many conversations. … Today, it’s just about having conversations.”
One board member asked what would happen if the district did nothing. “If we do nothing, at some point in time, we’ll get to a point where we have to start shutting down parts of schools,” Newman said. “There’s only so much duct tape you can put on them.”
Newman said he recognized that adults who went to those schools are going to have strong attachments, “but again, I have to be focused on the kids that are currently there. And what’s best, I think, for the kids that are currently there is to put them in the best environment possible.”
The superintendent said he had reviewed recommended projects in earlier reports the district had compiled on facility needs. “My focus and priority would be on a facility that took care of the St. John’s students’ needs as well as the Rosenwald Elementary/Middle needs.”
He outlined where St. John’s and Rosenwald stand today.
Of St. John’s, Newman said: “It’s a beautiful building that many people have many fond memories about. But the reality is, it’s a four-story, challenged facility for students and for children. And (building) codes and ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act requirements) and everything else has changed so much over the years that anytime we have to do a minor repair, it’s very expensive. … It just gets to a point where it’s more expensive to actually do renovations than it is to build.”
Of Rosenwald, he said: “We also have had discussions about our Rosenwald Elementary School attendance area, and how our enrollment has continued to drop in Society Hill … and because the numbers continue to drop, there’s very little opportunities for the students currently attending. For example, there’s 27 middle-school students total in grades 6 through 8. There’s a total of 118 students in attendance at Rosenwald.”
At both Rosenwald and St. John’s, Newman said, age has taken a toll and students are paying a price. “If you walk down the corridors and you look at the ceilings and you look at the size of the corridors themselves, and you compare them with, for example, J.L. Cain, or Bay Road, or Lamar-Spaulding, our new schools that we’ve built, there’s no comparison, especially as a child that’s attending in that environment.”
Newman said it costs about $5.5 million a year to operate St. John’s and Rosenwald as separate schools. Combining them into a new school would probably save the district about $2 million a year in operating costs (not counting the cost of construction), he said. Location of the new school was not discussed in detail; presumably it would be more or less between Society Hill and Darlington.
St. John’s has been the site of a school of some type since 1818; in 2018, staff and students celebrated its bicentennial as a place for education.
Other possibilities discussed at the board’s meeting (though far more briefly) included merging Pate Elementary School into Brockington Elementary School and shifting 4K and 5K students from Southside Early Childhood Center back to their home schools. No votes were taken on any of these possibilities.