On rainy days, the grounds of Gentry High School flood, the roofs leak and the awnings over the walkways leak water on students as they enter the building.
Even on sunny days, the facilities around the Indianola portion of the Sunflower County Consolidated School District experience plumbing issues and broken HVAC systems.
“The biggest issue is age,” said Gared Watkins, organizational support director for SCCSD. “Most of our buildings are 50 years or older.”
The community is at a crossroads.
It can spend millions of dollars to overhaul the outdated facilities that exist, or it can float a bond issue and build new facilities.
For a county that experiences a high poverty rate, and can scarcely see its taxes raised too much, the situation gets even more complicated when talking about a new high school.
In 2012, the state legislature voted on a bill, which was signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant, that consolidated the county’s school districts into one, meaning the people of Sunflower County have two outdated high schools to contend with.
There’s Gentry in Indianola, and there’s Ruleville Central School about 25 miles to the north.
The entire county must decide whether to build one central high school for the 60-mile long region or build two new high schools.
Brown & Associates, an education consulting company, has been retained to conduct a series of community meetings to educate citizens and get feedback from the populace as to its wishes.
Meanwhile, Watkins and SCCSD Superintendent Miskia Davis must figure out how to maintain a system of buildings that include a 65 year-old Gentry High school.
“The school with the most extreme needs would of course be Gentry,” Davis said. “The thing that immediately caught my eye was the flooding when it rained. That’s the major issue. Flooding, children having to walk through the water, and even the awnings leak where the water is dropping down on them.”
Davis said even the best students find it difficult to perform at a high level under the current circumstances.
Watkins says that Gentry isn’t the only school in the district that faces the problems that come with old age.
He said Carver Elementary frequently experiences plumbing problems that include both leaks and stopped up pipes.
Other schools’ air conditioning and heating units go out on a regular basis.
Building new buildings costs millions of dollars, but upkeep on older facilities is not cheap.
“We’re basically spending quite a few dollars on maintaining them,” Watkins said.
Davis said if the community decides on building new, whether one school or two, it’s going to have to be paid for through a bond issue. She said the county has a bond cap between $16-$17 million.
“That is what it’s going to take for us to build a school, whether it’s a school in Indianola or a school in a central location…It’s going to require us floating a bond issue,” Davis said. “Of course that would mean an increase in taxes. If we cannot float a bond issue, we cannot afford to build a school.”
The next meeting will take place at Drew Hunter Middle School in Drew on Monday night at 6 p.m.
