CEASE drops lawsuit involving Wise schools

UPDATED: 11:30 p.m.

While everyone seems guarded about getting their hopes up, the tenor of the consolidation discussion has changed in Wise County, to something a little less shrill.

It’s also looking to be a busy week for school consolidation in Wise County.

On Tuesday, CEASE, the nonprofit organization opposing plans to consolidate the county’s six high schools, announced that its lawsuit would be withdrawn.

At a special called meeting of the school board, Superintendent Jeff Perry presented information on a plan to build new schools. And while only four members were present – not enough for a quorum – Perry was optimistic about the plan’s potential.

On Thursday, the Wise County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to approve a county budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year, a budget in which the consolidation issue has been a big bone of contention and, at one point, appeared to threaten a local government shutdown.

At 9 a.m. Friday, a court hearing is scheduled to address the three anti-consolidation lawsuits remaining in Wise County Circuit Court.

And on Monday, a regular school board meeting is scheduled. As the school system works to consolidate into existing buildings for the upcoming school year, Perry said he’s hopeful that the board will take up the issue of school construction.

Brewing compromise

CEASE, a group whose acronym stands for Citizens for Equal and Accessible Student Education, filed its lawsuit April 28, seeking to put a halt to the school board’s plan to consolidate the county’s six high schools into three for the next school year.

On Tuesday, the group’s chairman, John Schoolcraft, said public opinion had changed in the county and CEASE simply didn’t have the money to move forward.

“While there are other legal actions still pending from other parties, CEASE hopes this action will pave the way for a period of healing in Wise County,” according to the statement the group distributed by e-mail Tuesday.

“Friends can disagree over the details and yet still be friends, and it is now time for that to happen,” according to the group’s statement. “CEASE thus strongly urges both governing boards to adopt a plan that best addresses the needs of all communities, and takes full advantage of the still-available lucrative financial incentives offered by the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

In an interview, Schoolcraft said he’s not familiar with the details of any particular compromise plan, but expressed hope that members of both sides in the county’s longstanding consolidation debate would be able to put their differences aside to reach a creative agreement.

He said a couple of things have changed. For one, when it became apparent that a plan to build two schools on one site was dead, the group lost many of its supporters, who were satisfied with a return to the discussion about three new schools on three sites.

For another, the group is out of money – even before the days of testimony Schoolcraft said the court would require to decide whether to grant a preliminary injunction.

“We were looking at those things and where we stood as far as being able to prevail in litigation, and we looked at it in terms of, very practically, if the judge did not grant the preliminary injunction to us, that means that the school board could continue on this path of combining these schools,” he said.

“Just say that you got down the road in September or October and finally heard the case and the judge ruled in our favor, well, you can’t turn around then and say, ‘OK, now let’s go back and put these kids back in these [closed] schools and get these schools up and running.’”

Nearing agreement

If there’s anything Schoolcraft and Perry seemed to be in complete agreement on in separate interviews Tuesday, it’s that compromise is possible between two sides of an issue that have been at bitter odds for years.

Perry said the three-school building plan has always had more support from county residents than the two-school plan anyway, and in that he sees the potential for a solution.

The version he presented at Tuesday’s meeting was a $60 million plan, half of which could be covered by no- or low-interest government loans and the other half he said could be borrowed with an interest rate of less than 5 percent.

Included in the plan: a new $25 million high school behind the current Powell Valley site; a $25 million high school in the Wise area; an $8.5 million classroom building in Coeburn; a $1.5 million gymnasium for Appalachia Elementary School; and a promise to allow eighth-grade students to remain at their respective elementary schools.

He also presented the consolidated schools’ names and mascots: The Union High School Bears; Central High School Warriors; and East Side High School Spartans.

“We are moving forward on the consolidation process,” Perry told the board members in attendance.

“It’s our hope that if the school litigation … were to terminate on Friday, it’s our hope that we can use that as an opportunity to simply look toward our common goals and be able to come together as one, create the kind of unity that we need to create the kind of school system that we would want.”

In an interview following the meeting, Perry said Wise County has great untapped potential, but has been held back by the bitter divide over consolidation. If this issue can be solved, he said, the county can move forward to unlock its potential and reach new heights.

dmccown@bristolnews.com

(276) 791-0701

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Today, Citizens for Equal and Accessible Student Education, or CEASE, has directed its attorney to nonsuit or dismiss without prejudice to its re-filing the lawsuit filed in Wise County Circuit Court against the Wise County School Board, Wise County Public Schools and Superintendent Perry.

For more read the press release here.