MPS agrees to sell closed school to church

The Montgomery County Board of Education has agreed to sell the former Harrison Elementary School building to a local church.

Restoration Baptist Church has offered to buy the south Montgomery building, said MCBOE President Robert Porterfield. Jason Taylor, chief school finance officer for the Montgomery Public Schools intervention, said the agreed upon price is $325,000. The church has been leasing the building for what Porterfield estimated to be the last two years.

The sale is not finalized, Porterfield said. The board only agreed to accept the church's offer, but there is no contract and a purchase agreement must now be drafted. 

Harrison Elementary School was one of eight schools MPS closed in 2011 as a cost savings measure. The closure of the school was then projected to save MPS $246,963 a year annually in utility costs, according to 2011 meeting minutes discussing the closures. MPS put Harrison Elementary up for sale in 2012, according to media reports, and Porterfield said the sale was in the works for "a while."

"We've been talking to them, I know, for at least the past two years, because they've been leasing the place for about $1,500 a month," Porterfield said. "You know, we're in a financial strain, and certainly this will be a little something to help in terms of what our financial strain is at this point." 

Assuming the $1,500 monthly lease fee is close to accurate, the sale equals about 18 years of monthly payments at that rate.

The board approved the sale unanimously minus board member Mary Briers, who was absent from MCBOE's Tuesday meeting held at George Washington Carver High School. 

Despite the school being on the market for more than five years, the sale was not mentioned at any board meeting this year. The board discussed the sale in executive session Tuesday during the meeting and approved it without discussing the details or what school was being sold publicly. Only after the meeting did Porterfield shed light on the deal. 

The $325,000 deal, if it is finalized, will not put much of a dent in the the amount needed by MPS to avoid a 2018 budget deficit without cutting expenditures. The current budget plan, approved by MPS Chief Administrative Officer Reginald Eggleston, projects for $4.7 million in operational and instructional staff cuts in order to avoid the nearly $5 million deficit MPS is projected to face otherwise. That budget was one of three presented to MCBOE. Of the other two, one projected a $5 million surplus with the sale of Georgia Washingto Middle School and the other showed a nearly $5 million deficit with no cuts. 

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MCBOE voted against the sale of Georgia Washington Middle School after a feasibility study showed the logistical difficulty of incorporating 506 students from the easternmost part of the district into schools when most of the extra space is on the west side of the city.

"These are projections," Porterfield said of the projected staff cuts. "Right now we can't say because these are projections early on, but we'll know more about it as we tend to move along in terms of getting the budget ready for next year."

Interim State Superintendent Ed Richardson gave the board a Dec. 31 deadline to have the 2018 budget completed and the deficit cleared. 

MCBOE will have a work session Wednesday at 5 p.m. at the MPS Central Office to discuss potential budget solutions, Porterfield said.