The Richmond County School System continues efforts to increase career and technical education offerings at T.W. Josey High School and the Marion Barnes Career Center.
System trustees discussed the plans during a Wednesday retreat with Tracy Richter, vice president of planning services for program management firm HPM.
HPM has been the driving force behind the system’s Comprehensive Facilities Plan, which calls for creating new schools, rerouting students and staff and closing several schools in an effort to better utilize the system’s resources.
Like most of the system’s schools, Josey has had enrollment decline. The school was approximately 69% utilized last year with just 625 students enrolled as of October, according to data Richter presented. Only one of the system’s high schools, Westside, was at capacity last year.
Richter said he’d thoroughly enjoyed a recent meeting with Josey alumni and supporters. It is now time to “get a community task force together to do a deep dive” into what the new Josey will become, he said.
This discussion will include how to use Murphey Middle School, which relocated adjacent to Josey in 2017, and the Marion Barnes Career Center, which opened at Josey in 2018, he said.
The new school will remain a neighborhood choice school and be a district-wide option, he said.
Interim Superintendent Malinda Cobb said interest exists in creating a full-blown “college and career academy” at the site. The academies typically partner with local businesses and postsecondary institutions such as technical colleges.
“Based on our numbers and our interest, there is the appetite for it,” she said.
Plan calls for building, closings, moves
The facilities plan, released last year, has many moving parts but is well underway. The system already closed and sold A. Brian Merry Elementary School as well as closed Spirit Creek Middle School. At least five other elementary schools are slated for closure.
Tuesday, the Augusta Commission voted to spend $790,000 to buy the empty Southside Elementary School for a new public safety training center.
Waiting in the wings are several new schools, including a new Richmond Hill Elementary and the Tutt/Langford replacement middle school under construction. The new Belair Middle School opened in January.
Trustees discussed a policy of advertising the surplus schools and property for a year then hiring a broker if no buyers emerge. The system has some 105 acres of land and 456,124 square feet of building space considered surplus, according to Richter’s presentation.
The properties include:
- Acreage and a warehouse around Josey
- Six acres at 1755 Lumpkin Road
- Three acres at 5106 Mike Padgett Highway
- Ursula Collins Elementary on 11 acres at 1321 Swanee Quintet Blvd.
- Silas X. Floyd Elementary at 921 Florence St.
- Terrace Manor Elementary on 12 acres at 3110 Tate Road
- Windsor Spring Elementary on 15 acres at 2534 Windsor Spring Road
- Spirit Creek Middle and Willis Foreman Elementary on 43 acres
