Golden Triangle Early College High School will not accept an incoming freshman class for the 2020-21 school year.
In an email sent to parents of applicants and obtained by The Dispatch, GTECHS Principal Jill Savely said she met with superintendents from area school districts and representatives from Mississippi Department of Education Thursday afternoon and they made the decision due to concerns raised by some districts.
“This was definitely not the news I had hoped to hear and I know that this is difficult for each of you as well,” Savely writes in the email.
Primarily, those concerns were GTECHS accepting students from private middle schools and an increase in the dual enrollment fee East Mississippi Community College planned to charge partner districts next school year.
GTECHS, which opened in 2015 and is located on EMCC’s Mayhew campus, accepts about 60 students per class from Columbus Municipal, Lowndes County, Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated, West Point Consolidated and Noxubee County school districts. The students have the opportunity to take college classes at EMCC alongside high school classes and graduate with an associate’s degree. The school boasts small class sizes and targets students who would struggle academically or socially in a typical high school.
In April, both CMSD and SOCSD’s school boards voted to end their partnership with GTECHS, citing both rising costs of sending students to the school and concern that GTECHS was using money for public school students while accepting students who attended private middle schools.
LCSD Superintendent Sam Allison, whose district is the fiscal and administrative agency of GTECHS, confirmed to The Dispatch the decision not to accept freshmen next year.
He stressed that students currently enrolled in GTECHS — even those from CMSD and SOCSD — who will make up the sophomore through senior classes will continue to attend through graduation.
“There are several kids that we want to finish and we don’t want to put that in jeopardy,” he said. “We want to do everything we can for those kids.”
However, he said he and the other superintendents felt there was “too much uncertainty” about the future of the program to guarantee another freshman class.
“We didn’t say (GTECHS) was totally gone,” he said. “We just said at this point, we need to make decisions.”
A ‘fiscal nightmare’
Since starting in 2015, GTECHS has been funded by MDE Mississippi Adequate Education Plan funds, which is based on a headcount of students taken the previous year. That amount changes every year, but this year would have been about $6,600 per student, according to Allison and copies of GTECHS’ general budget proposal obtained by The Dispatch.
Fiscal management and administration was supposed to transfer from LCSD to EMCC next school year. However, LCSD will continue those roles as part of Thursday’s decision.
In addition to MAEP funds, EMCC charged districts dual enrollments fees, which had not been part of the cost to districts in previous years. Those fees ranged from $16,000 to more than $30,000, depending on the number of students in each grade from those school districts.
CMSD Superintendent Cherie Labat called it a “fiscal nightmare,” particularly given that dual enrollment costs for 144 CMSD students taking EMCC courses have increased as well.
“There’s just been an inflation of costs from EMCC,” she said. “… How much more are we supposed to bear on costs? … We want to be a partner, but (a) cost increase that costs that much overnight, that’s a lot to deal with (during the COVID-19 pandemic).”
Labat said she felt that GTECHS should have done more, as an institution funded by public money, to focus on and recruit at-risk students, students who would be the first to attend college in their families or students who were interested in pursuing careers in area industries. She previously had raised concerns that private school students were being accepted to GTECHS.
EMCC President Scott Alsobrooks did not return multiple calls from The Dispatch by press time. Allison said since LCSD is maintaining fiscal agency of GTECHS, funding will continue as it has been in the past, with MAEP funds covering the school’s costs.
After Thursday’s decision, Savely said she emailed two separate letters — one informing parents of the nearly 160 current students they will continue at GTECHS and another to the parents of 81 applicants indicating none would be accepted. Applicants’ parents also will receive a letter through the mail.
Savely said she was disappointed with the superintendents’ decision to not accept a freshman class but that she hopes to go “back to the drawing board” to find a way to serve students not connected to their home schools.
“I am hopeful that we can find a way to reach those students who are either not being successful in school or could be more successful, or who are not connected to their traditional school,” she said. “… I think there are so many students in this area who we can help and can still benefit from being at GTECHS. I think there’s a misconception that the main value of a student being at GTECHS is the dual credit opportunities. … The main focus for us is connection with students and learning how we can help each one of them individually be as successful as they can possibly be.”
In her letter to applicants’ parents, Savely thanks them for their support of GTECHS.
“I want to applaud each of you for stepping out of your comfort zone and taking the risk to turn in an application to GTECHS,” she writes. “For some of you, applying to GTECHS may have been a very difficult decision and I admire your courage.”
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