The board’s 5–4 vote to continue with consolidation came at the end of a more than four-hour-long meeting on Thursday night.
The Evesham Township Board of Education has voted to move forward with its school consolidation plan and the closure of Evans Elementary School at the end of this school year.
The board’s 5–4 vote to continue with consolidation came at the end of a more than four-hour meeting on Thursday night after dozens of residents and teachers spoke for and against the closure of Evans.
Votes to continue with consolidation came from board president JoAnne Harmon and board members Elaine Barbagiovanni, Jeff Bravo, Trish Everhart and Joseph Fisicaro, Jr.
The four board members who voted to overturn consolidation included board vice president Sandy Student and board members William McGoey, Dennis Mehigan and Nichole Stone.
Harmon is the only board member still serving on the board to have originally voted against school consolidation last March but to also vote for continuing the plan at Thursday’s meeting.
Harmon failed to hold back tears at the meeting as she read a prepared statement on how she changed her vote five times in the preceding 72 hours.
Despite her original vote last March, Harmon said she was voting for the board to now continue with consolidation due to her belief that reversing consolidation so close to when the school was scheduled to close would keep Evans’ families and teachers isolated for years to come and never allow the township to move forward from the issue.
“I still don’t feel like closing a school is the right thing to do when the side-by-side analysis hasn’t been fully done and when I truly feel that all other possible options have not been explored, but we are so far along,” Harmon said. “If this decision gets reserved and we keep Evans open, this community will never truly heal.”
Harmon also reflected on how she had prepared an unused resignation speech for the meeting, since her time on the BOE in recent years had so negatively impacted her family life.
“Just two weeks ago, when I was testing my oldest daughter for her social studies test … in the span of that hour and a half, I received over 10 different texts, four emails and two phone calls that were all related to this,” Harmon said.
Before the vote regarding the consolidation plan, Superintendent John Scavelli, Jr. gave his annual budget presentation outlining how the district would be affected with and without closing Evans.
Scavelli said the district would lose an estimated $1.4 million from keeping Evans open, and the district would be forced to increase some class sizes to as large as 28 kids and reduce educational programs in the coming years.
Once all other reductions and cost-saving measures had been implemented, and with the district maximizing its legal tax levy limit, Scavelli said without consolidation the district’s expenses in coming years would still exceed annual revenue by at least $500,000.
With consolidation, Scavelli said the district could have a minimal tax increase in years to come and generate banked cap funds.
According to Scavelli, those banked cap funds, along with rental income from the closed Evans School, would allow the district to keep educational programs and average class sizes at 19 kids per class through the 2020–2021 school year.
“We need some strategy, something to at least help us to give us a fighting chance to keep what we have,” Scavelli said.
Scavelli once again outlined the district’s declining enrollment figures that led the board to first vote to consolidate its schools, with enrollment now down by about 1,000 students from peak enrollment of 5,436 students in 2002–2003 school year.
Future enrollment projections from the district show it with 4,317 kids in the furthest currently projected school year of 2021–2022.
Those figures continue to be debated by Evesham Township, which along with the planning board sued the BOE arguing the BOE had underestimated future enrolment figures and had voted to close the school without appearing before the planning board to submit proper facilities plans to the township.
According to a study commissioned by the township and planning board, the district would see between 4,459 and 4,593 students by 2020–21.
Evans Elementary fourth-grade teacher Elaine Blair spoke about those differences during public comment at Thursday’s meeting.
“The issue of consolidation has driven a major wedge into this community, especially over the last 11 months,” Blair said. “The vote for consolidation was a bad decision based on inaccurate facts and numbers, and these facts and numbers continue to change even now.”
At the end of the meeting, Harmon asked those on each side of the issue to look into their souls and ask themselves if they’ve done everything they can to either welcome Evans’ families or feel welcomed as an Evans family.
“I beg each of you, please, not later, not tomorrow, look into your souls now, tonight, and reach out to someone whose lives will be affected,” Harmon said.
