D-Day Tuesday For Some Mobile Schools

Alabama Mobile Three schools could be closed because of budget cuts.

by Steve Alexander

Published: Mon, April 27, 2009 - 9:21 pm CST Last Updated: Mon, April 27, 2009 - 9:40 pm CST

The Mobile County School Board is scheduled to vote Tuesday night on whether to close Hillsdale Middle School, Woodcock Elementary School and Fonvielle Elementary School to save money.
Board members are also scheduled to vote on relocating the math and science middle school magnet program from Clark to the former Shaw High School.
On Monday, supporters of Fonvielle made a last ditch effort to keep their school open.
Several dozen students, parents and teachers held a demonstration calling on school board members to keep Fonvielle open and not move students to Howard and Holloway Elementary Schools.
Fonvielle Teacher Mary Coats said, "We don't want to see our kids cross Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue in danger of being hit. We don't want to see them cross Three Mile Creek."
Fonvielle Parent Dominic Haywood said, "We're worrying about the gas mileage. We're worrying about the walkers. How can our kids go to more than one other school? We don't have transportation."
School Board President Ken Megginson said Fonvielle needs too much repair work to stay open.
Megginson said, "Our facility people have done several studies on Fonvielle and the amount of money we'd have to put in to it. The cost does not justify keeping it there."
Old Shell Road Magnet school was originally on the list of schools to be closed, but Superintendent Roy Nichols is now recommending it stay open.
Supporters of Old Shell held several rallies to keep it open.
Fonvielle supporters wonder if those rallies were persuasive.
Fonvielle Parent Latosha Jones said, "I think they (school system officials) had no intentions of closing the magnet schools anyway. That's just something they just put up there to throw out there to try to bamboozle us."
Coats said, "If they can save Old Shell Road (School) which is in dire, worse condition than Fonvielle, surely they can save Fonvielle."
Megginson said, "Old Shell Road, I think we'll in a couple of years come back and look at that building one more time. But, at the present time, we just felt like that moving Old Shell to Dunbar was not the appropriate move."
The school board meeting begins at 6pm Tuesday and will be held at Vigor High School.

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