Granville School Option:
Vote Budget, Close School
By Martha Slater

Granville voters will face tough choices at the town’s school meeting, Tuesday, March 4, beginning at 5 p.m.

In addition to articles from the school board asking for support of the two proposed budgets necessary to operate the school district, voters will also be asked to consider three articles that would close the town’s small elementary school.

Article 2 on the warning for the meeting asks approval of the $420,816 necessary to support the Granville-Hancock Joint School District, and Article 3 seeks approval of a proposed amount of $832,725 to run the schools for the 2008-09 school year. That sum includes the Granville-Hancock Joint District Assessment.

The next three articles were placed on the warning by petition. With 192 registered voters, the 12 signatures collected made up the needed 5% of the electorate. If approved, the articles would close the doors of the Granville School. Constructed in 1857, it has been educating students for more than 150 years.

Article 4 asks voters to "terminate the Joint School Agreement between the Granville Town School District and the Hancock Town School District, and any other mutual contracts which pertain to the operation(s) of combined educational activities."

Article 5 seeks approval to "terminate the operation of the Granville Village School and allow all pre-K through sixth grade students to attend the school of their choice."

Article 6 asks voters to "transfer the ownership of the Granville School House to the township of Granville for a fee of $1."

The land around the building belongs to the town already, but the building itself and the land it sits on "to the roof drip line" were deeded to the school board back in the 1800s. If that article is approved, it has been suggested that the building, which was connected to the Town Hall about 15 years ago, could be used as a town clerk’s office.

Board Surprised

School board chair David Bagley told The Herald he was surprised by the petition. He noted that the town currently has a total of 50 students in grades K-12 to educate, with 40 of them tuitioned out. The remaining 10 are educated in Hancock and Granville as part of the Joint Village School District.

"This is the fourth year of our five-year contract for the Village School District," noted school board member Tammie Beattie, "so this would be the year we’d negotiate anyway."

Beattie told The Herald that, "as a board member, parent and chair of the PTO, I think it’s a bad idea all the way around to close the school. No one from the petitioning group came to a school board meeting to speak with us prior to submitting the petition, and none of the parents of the 50 Granville students signed it."

Granville resident, Jim Dague, who circulated the petition, said, "I’m not pushing either side of this. The reason I circulated it is that I wanted everyone to have the opportunity to discuss the issue. It’s all about allowing people on both sides of the issue to explore their options and make their choices. I find it unfortunate that some people have taken this personally."

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