NEW ALBANY — Two schools and the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp. administration building will be put up for sale, if the board approves a recommendation later this month. Another will become an early childhood learning center and the future of the fourth is unknown.

Deputy Superintendent Brad Snyder said he will recommend putting Pine View and Silver Street elementaries up for sale in addition to the administration building, which is directly across from Walmart, in New Albany.

“My preference would be to list it for a little while, maybe a year or so, and see what happens. Maybe it’d go to a public auction to see if there is any interest in that,” he said.

Superintendent Bruce Hibbard said the administration building will be listed, if approved by the board, because of a recommendation he heard from the board previously.

“If we got an incredible offer on this site ... we could possibly move to Silver or Galena [elementaries],” he said. “We’re just trying to maximize our dollars.”

However, moving to Silver Street would have the same complications it has now as a school — not being compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, he said. Hibbard said the administration can look at solving that problem.

“We want to be good stewards and that might be the best place for us to be for the community as well,” he said. “We want to make sure Silver Street doesn’t become a blight on the community. We want to make sure we are good partners with the community.”

Otherwise, Hibbard said the district can look to find a buyer who will keep up the building.

Children’s Academy of New Albany will become an early-childhood learning center, with the district’s preschool being stationed there, Hibbard said. He said that Head Start may also offer classes in the building.

The future for Galena Elementary is more unclear.

“That is probably the one mystery to us,” Snyder said. “We don’t have a real concrete plan. I hope we retain the deed and the physical property, but right now we don’t have a plan either way. We don’t have a plan to repurpose it, we don’t have a plan to tear it down, we don’t have a plan to keep it.”

Although it is another option for the administration building, Hibbard said that may not be needed. He said the administration services may fit next door to its existing location off Grant Line Road, in the Education Support Center, which is the former Northside Christian Church site.

He said the alternative education classes there now will be moving back to the high schools, making more room available in the building.

“It’d be a tight fit,” Snyder added.



HISTORY OF SCHOOL CLOSURES

This isn’t the first time NA-FC has been left with unused school buildings, trying to figure out what to do with them. In the 1990s, the district stopped renting St. Mary of the Knobs Elementary and doubled the size of Lafayette Elementary, creating the new Floyds Knobs Elementary. West Spring Street School, which is now the Hampton Inn location, was closed in the late ’80s and M.L. Reisz was shuttered in the earlier ’80s, Snyder said. He said at one point Corydon Pike Elementary was closed and Pine View was built for those students.

He said there were others before that, but he was unsure of the details.

Snyder said he doesn’t think those closures negatively effected the area.

He said one decision that the board made that did change this area was selling 60 acres of land by Prosser School of Technology. That area now houses Meijer, a movie theater and other businesses.

“West Spring Street School is now the Hampton Inn. That’s a nice little use of space next to the interstate,” Snyder said. “Why would you want a school there anyway? But when we did that, there was emotion. But that’s a higher and better use.”

He said Reisz is now a municipal building, which has helped keep jobs in downtown New Albany. He said the district selling a general services building off East Market Street gave LifeSpring a place to call home.

“I think the community has gained,” he said of the changes.



FUTURE FOR THESE SITES

Snyder said time will tell if the community will gain from selling Silver Street and Pine View, but said that wasn’t the reason behind this or prior decisions to close schools.

“All of that is a byproduct of the agenda that was to enhance student learning by keeping pupil/teacher ratios low and by keeping a rich offering [of curriculum],” he said.

“I believe that as a school district the way for us to help the community is to impact student achievement, because when people do move into communities, people do look at the Department of Education Web site and they look at academic achievement of the schools,” Hibbard said. “I think the one thing we can do here is keep class size down, get rid of split classes.

“If we do a better job at the teaching and learning piece and really get focused on helping our students, we’ll see a positive impact for the community and a re-insurgence of our district as a leader in academic achievement. That’s where I feel like we are headed. Then you will have more people wanting to move here.”

Hibbard added that closing schools makes it so that teachers can keep their jobs, class sizes will actually go down and split grade-level classes will be eliminated.