Students, staff march to protest potential closure of Creedmoor Elementary school ahead of vote
Parents and teachers from Creedmoor Elementary dressed in red at a school board meeting Tuesday night at South Granville Highschool in Creedmoor to address the possibility of the school closing its doors.
The school board is debating whether to close Creedmoor Elementary and use it as a temporary campus for G.C. Hawley Middle School.
Ahead of that meeting, parents, students and some staff began marching at Creedmoor Elementary School to let school board members know they are against the potential closure of their beloved campus.
According to N.C.G.S. § 115C-47(1), the Board of Education has specific legal authority when it comes to decisions regarding school reorganization: "Local boards of education shall have the power and authority to close or consolidate schools located in the same district . . . whenever and wherever in its judgment the closing or consolidation will better serve the educational interest of the local school administrative unit or any part of it."
The meeting will also be available to stream online.
The district said the closure of CES will cause a major disruption to its students and staff in the Creedmoor area.
"The potential decision of the Granville County School Board to close CES and transfer these students to neighboring elementary schools would require significant effort to implement," the district wrote in a 2020 closure study.
GCHMS has four elementary schools that feed into it: Tar River, Wilton, Mt. Energy and Creedmoor. The school board has stated that GCHMS students and staff will fit into the smaller Creedmoor campus. However, all of the students attending CES would have to be transferred to one of the other seven elementary schools in the district.
Parents like Tamara Ester-Magnum said the move would make students travel even further for classes.
"15-to-17 minutes," Ester-Magnum said. "[And] the traffic is horrible, it'll be a lot longer than that.
The relocation of GCHMS will be a temporary move until the county can decide what to do with the current Hawley buildings -- which are in bad shape, according to the district.
The issue of moving GCHMS was tabled by the board last year for further study, but resurfaced when two of the newest board members were sworn in the first week of December.
Teachers and staff at CES were notified of the possible closure by email on Dec. 19, just as Christmas break had started.
The Granville School Board will meet Jan. 30 for a work session, but an official decision on the schools future will likely be made by spring or summer of this year.
Parents and teachers are hoping school representatives will reconsider removing the school from the community.
"If I were still a parent or any school that had a child, I would be fighting like hell to get my child into Creedmoor Elementary School of the Arts," said Mary Harris, a speaker at the meeting. "Because it still exists."
