Upon the recommendation of the White County School Board, a subcommittee to investigate options for the property that once housed Central View Elementary School was recently formed and held its first meeting June 24, at the courthouse.
The committee consists of three school board members: Bob Young, Kay Prater, and Kenneth Robinson; three members of the county government: County Executive Denny Wayne Robinson, Commissioner Roger Mason, and Finance Director Chad Marcum; and two members of the Central View community: Jeff Wright and Bruce Null.
“The purpose of this meeting is to hear from the community about the potential uses of the Central View property,” the subcommittee’s chairperson Young said.
He started the meeting by opening the floor to Wright.
“My neighbors in Central View are angry,” Wright said. “This is still important to them. Central View matters to my neighbors - not in the past tense. Central View matters right now.”
Wright told the board he was speaking as a representative of his community. He said passions run high among community members when it comes to the Central View School property, most of whom feel the school should be open and serving children.
“My neighbors’ chief desire is that the school be reopened,” Wright said. “That’s priority number one in a way that there is not really a comparable priority number two.”
Wright said it is his belief it is in the best interest of his neighbors that the property remains public property rather than be sold to a private individual or company.
“Central View [school] is important to the identity of our community,” Wright said. “I think it remains important to the identity of our community. It still represents an important part of our community, even when it is not in service. I don’t have the words to communicate to you how that property remains an item of interest for my neighbors.”
Wright presented three more possible options to the board, one of which was to turn the property into a park and community center.
“It has tremendous potential still for the community,” he said, adding that families take their children to play on the playground and that he had taken his family and his church family to use the property recently.
Wright also brought up the possibility of a private group taking possession of the property and using it for a classical college, with a focus on animal husbandry and plumbing, carpentry, and electrical skills.
“This one I have a personal interest in, but this is third in priority for my community,” he said.
Wright said he teaches at a classical Christian school, in Cookeville - Highland Rim Academy - which had recently been approached about opening a classical college in the area.
“We would be interested, if the school board wanted to talk to us about using it for educational purposes,” he said. “That would continue the school’s heritage as an educational facility.”
Wright presented a fourth option, saying he had been contacted prior to the meeting by Brandon Brown, who represents an unnamed retired NFL player who had purchased a farm in the area for the purposes of growing hemp for CBD and stated they may be interested in purchasing the school to use as a processing plant.
“My responsibility here is to represent my neighbors, and my neighbors want the school reopened,” Wright told the board.
Kenneth Robinson, White County School Board member, asked, “How are we going to maintain the building in the long run and keep it in the community’s hands? I’ve supported Central View for many years, and I would hate to see it go into private hands. But the question is how are we going to finance the maintenance of it?”
Wright reminded the committee if the property was functioning as a school, tax dollars would be designated to the property, but then mentioned the possibility of grants to get the property set as a park and/or community center, with the possibility of a community committee taking on the routine maintenance.
Prater said she took surveys of community centers, in Warren County, that had formerly been schools and found they held fundraisers to finance the maintenance. However, the community is solely responsible for the upkeep and accessibility of the property.
Questions arose about options of lease versus sale of the property. It was stated if the property was sold, it would have to be done at public auction. However, there is a similar, but much smaller, property in the Quebeck area of White County that the community leases from the county on what Marcum said he believes is a 99-year lease agreement.
“We are not good landlords,” Young said of the school board, stating the board did not want to be involved in the upkeep of the property. “We need to be consciously aware that we can’t just let it sit there. We need to be proactive about uses and look at all the options. That’s our responsibility.”
Two additional persons were in attendance during the meeting and addressed the committee.
Carol Johnson, a member of the Central View community, stated she felt it needed to be reopened as a school. Dewayne Howard, a property owner in the Central View community as well as a school board member, asked about the possibility of doing a study to determine how many students live in the Central View School zoning district.
“The main goal is that the community wants their school back,” Howard said. “It’s a tremendous understatement to say how mad that they are.”
Howard asked if the school board had set any specific policies indicating what it would take to reopen the school.
“Would you be interested in doing any research into saying it would take this many kids or we need this road?” Howard said. “There have been roads taken off going to that [school zone]. Ask for those roads back. See what it would take to open that school back up.
“The simple solution is to just open it back up. Really and truly, that would be the easiest thing to do. Enforce your zoning. Staff it with good, senior teachers. You would be surprised how much the community would appreciate you.”
Young told Howard the committee couldn’t make a commitment, and the school board had a policy committee that would be better to address the matter.
“The purpose of this committee is to explore options,” Young said. “There’s no guarantee that this school will ever be back open.”
Null spoke up in support of Howard’s request, saying the district was not what it once was, with many roads in the community having been designated to other schools even before the closing of Central View School.
“The district, when it closed, nowhere resembled the district I went to school in,” Null said. “This thing has been going on for 20 years. The boundary lines were shrunk.”
Null said that although he was a county commissioner at the time the boundary lines were shrunk, he was never made aware of the changes until after they took place. “The community thinks that was done to facilitate the closing of the school,” Null said. “He’s [Dewayne Howard] right. There’s a lot of bad blood down there and a lot of harsh words being said. I’d be curious to know if we put the boundaries back to where they were, how many kids would be in the school today.”
Wright also said he felt Howard had a valid point and that agreeing to at least conduct a study of the zoning lines and the number of students who would be zoned for the Central View School would be a gesture of good faith he could take to the community.
Ultimately, Young said he would present all of the options to the White County School Board at its next meeting.
“At the end of the day, I don’t want to see an eye sore in your community,” Young told the members and audience who were representing the Central View community. “We have to own up to our responsibility and say don’t just sit on it and let it rot.”
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