The White County School Board voted Thursday on a memorandum of understanding to allow the White County Sheriff’s Department to use the former Central View school property as a training facility.
Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said primary condition requested by the department involves a guaranteed timeframe to vacate the premises if the district ever needs to reclaim the building for educational purposes. Dronebarger said the department asked for two years.
“Really the only sticking point with the Sheriff’s Department is they want two years to vacate the premises should the school board want it back,” Dronebarger said. “Their plan is to invest money and time and sweat equity into the facility to make it usable for their purposes, and they just want the opportunity to have the time to change and adjust and to get out should the school board need it for a school building later on.”
Several board members expressed concern over the length of the exit clause, suggesting a shorter timeframe of six months to a year. Board Member Jayson McDonald said the community around the facility is growing and the district might need the building sooner than expected.
“I don’t understand why they want two years to be able to get out,” McDonald said. “Looks like to me they could load everything up that they’ve got in there and probably two hours and get out.”
Several school board members wanted the period reduced to six months or one year. School Board Chair Bob Young said he could understand the Sheriffs Department investment of time and resources to convert the facility into a training area.
“If they do, for example, they spend five years down there and create a nice training facility for them to that they’ve invested in to conduct their business, their training, and then all of a sudden come up and say that ‘hey, you know, 90 days we want you out,’” Young said. “I understand the challenges that having to relocate bring.”
Reclaiming the building for students would require a lengthy process of hiring architects and engineers before construction could begin. Dronebarger said the district would have ample time to see enrollment growth trends before initiating a project of that scale.
“If we decided today that we were going to move back into that building, it would take considerable amount of time,” Dronebarger said. “There would be a whole RFP or RFQ process, we would have to go through architects and engineers, and so there would be a year of planning and preparation involved anyway.”
Several school board members intimated it will be when and not if the Central View School will be brought back online. There have been multiple moves by community members to reopen the school.
“I live in the area and I welcome the Sheriff’s Department to be in that area and I think it’s great that they can use it instead of it sitting empty,” Sherrie Stone said. “But the way the housing is going up in our area, at some point if we remodel that back area that’s old and built onto the new part of the school, it could be reestablished as a fine school.”
But Dronebarger said the system is losing students, not gaining.
“I can’t see that being a quick need,” Dronebarger said.
Stone said some more students home school in Central View area because the school is too far away.
The board ultimately proceeded with a roll call vote on the agreement as presented, resulting in a split decision among the eight voting members.