Short-sighted to close Cave Spring Elementary

Cave Spring Elementary School is closing. That’s what the Floyd superintendent communicated several times at the most recent Local School Governance Team meeting held in Cave Spring. Despite several appeals and alternate solutions presented, it appears he has already made his decision and is pushing for a board vote in January to finalize this. The deal is already done.

So, all the public hearings are just dog and pony shows to check off the boxes needed to move forward?

Why has the superintendent and the Floyd Board of Education not considered the unique learning environment CSES provides as a true community- based school ( and the first STEM- certified public school in all of Floyd County!) as a prized resource instead of as a useless appendage to cut off?

Why not bus students from other elementary schools TO Cave Spring Elementary to provide them with a terrific educational experience they can’t get elsewhere? Or make CSES a magnet STEM school for the whole county and make use of the excellent and well-trained teachers already in place here? Where’s the imagination and creativity?

If the superintendent really believes, “My job is not economic development,” “My job is not taking care of towns in Floyd County,” then he is both naïve and foolish. Does he not grasp how crucial educational opportunity and good schools are to economic development — something Floyd County is in dire need of, now and in the near future?

Cutting off educational access at the entire southern end of Floyd County is incredibly short-sighted. Many families are already discussing moving to Spring Garden, Alabama, and elsewhere — but not to Rome. Why?

Because their children’s education will be cut off from the community in which they live. Because they want the small town with a great school.

Cave Spring will lose its small- town charm as local business after local business shuts down. No way the Silver Comet Trail connects to a dead town. No way the Pinhoti Trail reaches its potential as an attraction. The festivals and multistate visitors that flock to Cave Spring will disappear when the heart of the community is ripped out.

That’s what it means to close Cave Spring Elementary.

Apparently, the Floyd BOE doesn’t know its history. Some 25 years ago, residents by the carload flocked to Rome for a board meeting about closing Cave Spring High School. When they returned home, they discovered bulldozers already tearing down the school. Done deal. Decision made.

History repeats itself?

Pastor John A. Page

Cave Spring UMC