THOMASVILLE — Consolidation, school taxes and the new Thomasville City Scholars Academy were the main topics at a Wednesday meeting of the Thomasville Business Action Council.

The group heard from Thomasville City Schools Superintendent Sabrina Boykins-Everett as well as other school officials on these issues and more at The Plaza.

Founded in 1900, the city school system has an enrollment of 2,870 students, 76 percent of which are minorities. The school system’s newest program, the Scholar’s Academy, opened at the beginning of the current school year.

Boykins-Everett said the purpose of the magnet program is to provide a more rigorous curriculum for students with high academic aspirations. About 239 students in grades six through 12, mostly from MacIntyre Park Middle School and Thomasville High School, attend the Scholars Academy.

One of the main goals in creating the school was to retain city residents within the city school system, Boykins-Everett said.

“We see the magnet program as a draw to the community,” she said. “There was a family who recently relocated here and were planning to move to Tallahassee. They are now considering living in Thomasville so their child can attend the Scholars Academy.”

During the school’s planning and enrollment period, Everett said there were questions about the racial makeup of the student population and whether there would be a place in the school for minorities.

“We are very proud of the racial diversity in our program and believe the support provided to minority students will result in increasingly higher numbers of minority students enrolled in advanced placement courses and earning honor graduate status,” Everett said. “What you find many times is a reluctance of minority students to be in magnet programs. The reason for that really has more of a sociological basis than anything else, where students who may be perceived as stepping outside of their culture choose not to perform at the level of their potential.”

Everett said the magnet school provides a more supportive environment for students who want to learn and will better prepare students for college. Those who enroll in the school by ninth grade have the opportunity to graduate with a high school diploma and associate’s degree in college.

The Scholars Academy is funded by a combination of federal, state and local sources. Because the school uses facilities, teachers and administrators already in the school system, it has the lowest operating costs among all Thomasville City Schools, Everett said.

Although the school system receives funding from federal and state sources, local property taxes are still the primary source of revenue, Everett said. This week, the Thomasville City Board of Education raised property taxes in order to fund this year’s budget.

Everett said several factors continue to impact school revenues, making the property tax increase necessary. Freeport exemptions — tax breaks on certain inventory stored in Thomasville — alone have taken some $700,000 in annual revenues from the system, Everett estimated.

State austerity cuts, which total about $2.3 million since put in place in 2003, have also taken money from school coffers each year.

Thomasville City Schools Board of Education member Darrell Allen, who attended the meeting, said state funds are often earmarked for a specific purpose such as teacher salaries or other government initiatives.

“I’ll give you an example — the governor has given all the school systems in the state of Georgia three new buses. Now, we can use the buses to transport athletes and that sort of thing, but we’d rather have that money to buy textbooks,” Allen said. “The way they look at it, it’s their money. They give it to you for a specific purpose and nothing else. Otherwise, they take it back.”

Everett said she believes consolidation of the Thomas County and Thomasville City school systems into one system is a bad idea.

“Two school systems give our students twice the opportunity to participate in sports, twice the leadership opportunities and more chances to be known as an individual instead of just a number in a large crowd,” Everett said. “On any given Friday night, you have two quarterbacks, two bands, two sets of fans,and two sets of homecoming queens. If you have one consolidated school system, you split those opportunities for students.

“Competition between the systems make both systems better.”

Everett pointed out that it would cost basically the same to run a consolidated school system since there would be the same amount of students, teachers and facilities needed. One of the only costs that would change would be for administration, she said.

Several pieces of legislation also threaten to impact the Thomasville City School System and schools across the state, Everett said. One involves mandatory class size reduction, which will require school systems to hire more teachers and possibly create new facilities.

The other is known as the “65-percent solution,” which requires schools to spend 65 percent of their overall budgets on instruction in the classroom. However, that mandate fails to clearly define what counts as instructional spending, and leaves out support staff such as media specialists and bus drivers.

“We feel that every staff member impacts instruction,” Everett said, adding that the school system currently spends more than 68 percent of its budget on instruction.

To contact reporter Brewer Turley, call (229) 226-2400, ext. 226.