Carter County BOE votes to close Little Milligan Elementary

ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. (WJHL) — The Carter County Board of Education has voted to close Little Milligan Elementary School.

Board members voted 6-1-1 on Thursday evening to close the school.

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School leaders said they are concerned about the budget moving into the next year.

The main reason they provided for closing Little Milligan is the amount it costs per student compared to other schools in the district. It’s over $16,000 per student at Little Milligan for 69 students. Other schools are less than $10,000 per student, although they have more students.

Several community members spoke against closing the school during the public comment part of the meeting.

Reva Church is a parent of Little Milligan students. She started a petition, garnering around 500 signatures. She’s concerned about longer bus routes.

“We are very far on that side of the county,” Church said. “The only other option would be bring our kids all the way to Hampton, which would be longer bus routes for them. And my kids already get up super early and don’t get home to 4:10 if they ride the bus. So traveling there would only increase that amount of time.”

Church said she is also concerned for overcrowded classrooms. Many parents at the meeting said their children learn better in a smaller setting.

“My child does really good in his classroom size, and I’m aware that like 15 or 16 is a small number,” Church said. “But when you bust up another school such as Little Milligan, and you try to put that in with, say, maybe Hampton Elementary I’m not sure what the plan is. You add those kids in there, you cause overcrowding, and then you have one teacher with all these kids and some of them need a little bit of extra help and it’s hard to get one on one attention when you have overcrowded classrooms.”

Kelly Stout, another parent of a Little Milligan student, agrees. She said she doesn’t believe funding is a good enough reason for closing the school.

“It makes me feel like those students from Butler and Poga, whether they be Johnson or Carter County resident, aren’t worth that money and their education,” Stout said. “Just because the resources are an outlier isn’t as important as those who may be in Stoney Creek, Happy Valley area or Hampton, , and that’s where most of those board members are from.”

Stout said the students will be emotional from this news.

“They’ve been enduring a lot of stress the past two weeks under state testing,” Stout said. “And this is a curveball thrown at them out of the blue.”

Parents also mentioned how good the scores are at Little Milligan.

“We were also top five in the state last year for TCAP scores,” Church said. “And I think that’s a beautiful and great thing. Our teachers do so good and our kids respond to the way our teachers are teaching them and the way our kids are learning. And I just don’t see the positive side in closing something that is so good.”

Church said she and other parents are discussing homeschooling their children instead, to avoid longer bus routes and overcrowding.

Last year, the school board approved transferring 6-8th grades from Little Milligan to Hampton Elementary, making Little Milligan a pre-K through 5th grade school.

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