The school building at 595 Elrod Street in Cornelia will soon belong to one of the state’s Regional Educational Service Agencies (Pioneer RESA) and will become the home base for the Northeast Georgia FUTURES program.
After trying to sell the property for a year, Habersham Board of Education members voted instead to give the building to Pioneer RESA during a special called meeting on Friday. “We never had a viable offer (to buy) on it that I can recall,” says Superintendent Matthew Cooper of the attempted sale.
The Historic Building
The school opened on Elrod Street in 1955 as the “Regional Colored High School” serving hundreds of African-American students from Habersham, Banks, Stephens, Rabun, and White Counties. A desegregation order closed the facility in the spring of 1966. During the following months, the building was cleaned out, all the books, desks and other materials inside were reportedly burned. It reopened for students of all races in 1967 with the new name “Cornelia Elementary No. 2” and remained open until 1999.
The system’s Educational Technology Center moved into the building and operated there until the department relocated into the Ninth Grade Academy in 2012. After that, the Elrod St. facility sat empty. It was placed on the market last year with an asking price of $256,000.00.
Supporters of a regional African American History Museum had hoped to purchase the building to use it as a cultural center. Museum organizers tried to raise awareness and funds with a traveling exhibit of photographs and other paraphernalia detailing the school’s origin. A reunion of former “Colored High School” students was held at the building in 2013 but support for the plan never matched the amount of funding needed. “The museum ran into so many brick walls,” explains Museum Director Dr. Audrey Rosser-Milo, “after two or three years of that, we just had to give it up.”
“We’re just heartbroken,” says Audrey Davenport who worked on the museum project. “We were going to use it as a multi-cultural hub.” While she’s disappointed over the failure of their plan Dr. Rosser-Milo says, “The building certainly should be used if it can improve education and quality of life for any segment of the population.”
The FUTURES Program
Starting this fall, the building on Elrod Street will again welcome students from Habersham and surrounding counties who are segregated from regular classrooms. Superintendent Matthew Cooper says the FUTURES Program will open a regional school, “It’s for students that have special needs. They have such severe emotional behavior disorders that we are not able to serve them in our regular schools.”
Click to learn more about The FUTURES Program
For the past several years, Gainesville City Schools hosted the regional program. This year, Gainesville is taking back the existing FUTURES building for their own use, “We plan to implement a 9th Grade Center (at that location) for our first time 9th graders,” explains Gainesville Superintendent Wanda Creel. FUTURES will also close their location in Franklin County and plan to consolidate the entire program in Cornelia.
Cooper believes the move to Elrod Street will be better for local kids assigned to the FUTURES program, “These students from Habersham County have been riding a bus every day all the way to Gainesville and back.”
According to FUTURES Program Director Dr. Stacey Benson, the bus trip will now be shorter for students from Habersham, Rabun, Banks and White counties. Students from Hart, Franklin, Hall and Stephens counties face longer bus trips to reach the Cornelia site.
Dr. Benson says the school will be open by August, “The consolidation will allow us to provide our students a facility that is completely renovated with the specific needs of our students in mind.”
Click for a video detailing Dr. Benson’s plans for the Elrod Street School
The plan includes a school counselor and school psychologist on site as well as a special therapeutic suite and a new program for “low functioning autism” students. Benson plans to use the school’s athletic fields as well, “The outdoor area will have a new fenced in playground with state of the art play equipment designed to promote social skills in our students.”
The School Board Deal
“We’re not doing this just out of the kindness of our hearts,” Cooper says of the deal that transfers ownership from the Habersham BOE to Pioneer RESA. “We’re going to benefit from this in a number of ways.”
Cooper says giving the Elrod Street building to Pioneer RESA will save the BOE $64,484 in annual student transportation costs and $7,111 per year in maintenance and utilities currently paid on the vacant building. If those numbers hold, in 4 years they will have saved more than the $256,000.00 they hoped to get from selling the building.
The deal also comes with another caveat designed to protect taxpayers’ interests. If Pioneer RESA sells the building anytime in the next 5 years, Habersham Schools will get a percentage of the sale price. The percentage shrinks each year, from 50% in year one down to 10% in year five.
In addition, Habersham won’t have to pay for fixing up the school, “Hundreds of thousands (of dollars) in renovations will be done on that building and we don’t have to pay a dime,” says Cooper. The other county school systems within Pioneer RESA will share the cost of the work.
BOE members unanimously support the plan citing the financial savings and the fact that Habesham’s own FUTURES students will be better served closer to home. According to the agreement, the transfer of title should follow within 30 days of Friday’s vote.
About Pioneer RESA:
The Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA) is comprised of 16 regional educational service agencies strategically located in service districts throughout the State of Georgia. The agencies were established for the purpose of sharing services designed to improve the effectiveness of the educational programs of member school systems. In addition, the RESAs assist the State Department of Education in promoting its initiatives. The RESAs inform systems of innovation and gather research on programs as needed.
