School choice, history of segregation collide as one Florida county shutters its rural schools

MADISON, Fla (AP):

Tens of thousands of students have left Florida’s public schools in recent years amid an explosive expansion in school choice. Now, districts large and small are grappling with the harsh financial realities of empty seats in ageing classrooms.

As some districts are being forced to close schools, administrators are facing another long-avoided reckoning: how to integrate students in buildings that remain racially and economically segregated.

In the Florida panhandle, one tiny district plans to consolidate its last three stand-alone elementary schools into one campus because there aren’t enough students to cover the costs of keeping the doors open. But the Madison County School District’s decision to do so has exposed tensions around race in a community where for years some white families have resisted integrating public schools.

“It’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about,” county school board member Katie Knight told The Associated Press.

“At the end of the day, these kids are going to have to interact with all people of races, skill sets, personality types,” she said. “Trying to segregate our children is not an option.”

Shirley Joseph is a product of Florida’s segregated schools – and was a black student in some of the first integrated classes at one of the local high schools.

Now, as superintendent of Madison County’s public schools, it’s her job to close some of them.

There are fewer than 1,700 students left in traditional public schools in this rural county in the state’s old cotton belt. Many families have moved away to places with more jobs and housing – or chosen other kinds of schooling. For those who remain, the schools provide more than just an education: All of Madison’s students qualify for free meals because of the county’s poverty rate. One in three children there live in poverty.

“If we are to survive as a district,” Joseph said, “we have got to make the hard decisions.”

One of the schools slated to close is Greenville Elementary, which has fewer than 100 students – roughly a third of the school’s capacity. When Florida schools were officially segregated, Joseph attended classes there at what was then called the Greenville Training School.

Generations of Black residents cherish the school’s legacy in the tiny town of Greenville where music legend Ray Charles grew up.

More than 50 years after desegregation, the school remains 85 per cent black. Class sizes have dwindled as the school struggles to hold onto certified teachers. State ratings of the school have fluctuated, but Greenville has been rated an “F” five times over the past decade for low rates of student achievement.

Starting next year, Greenville will consolidate with Lee and Pinetta Elementary Schools, which are predominantly white. All those students will be sent to Madison County Central School, a majority black K-8 campus that’s a 15- to 20-minute drive from the outlying elementary schools. The district hasn’t announced yet which teachers will move to the consolidated school and which ones will be out of job.