Sullivan County school board considers closing a Bristol elementary school

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – The Sullivan County Board of Education is considering the closure of Bristol’s Akard Elementary School so it can renovate a school in Kingsport.
During a special-called meeting this evening, the board unanimously approved plans to look at closing Akard and two other elementary schools to pay back the $15.4 million in bonds it will use to renovate and expand Kingsport’s Ketron Intermediate School.
“We’re going to be closing some schools,” Board Chairman Ron Smith said at the meeting. “We need to go on the record and say that.”
School officials learned in September that the district qualified for $15.4 million in low-interest bonds from Tennessee’s Qualified School Construction Bond program.
The money, which comes from the federal stimulus package, would be used to add 23 classrooms to Ketron’s campus in the Bloomingdale Community north of Kingsport.
The new facility, which would serve students in the second through seventh grades, would have a total of 45 classrooms and should be ready by the summer of 2012.
But before the work can start, the Sullivan County Commission must agree to secure the debt and pay it back because it is the county’s taxing authority.

For more on this story, see Thursday’s Bristol Herald Courier.