Covington Schools’ master facilities: ‘These plans are plans for the future’

A new master facilities plan for Covington Independent Public Schools is beginning to focus its scope, and district leaders and staff are weighing the pros and cons of available options.

Members of the Covington Board of Education, as well as the district’s professional leadership, explored some options, which had begun to take shape after a community input process that began early last year, at a special meeting on Saturday. No formal action took place at the meeting, and the district is still a good way away from making any decisions. Yet, the meeting served as a means of assessing how far along the district is in the process.

“These plans, this is not something that will occur next year,” said Superintendent Alvin Garrison. “I mean, these plans are plans for the future.”

In other words, the point of the meeting was just to begin having discussions about the options on the table, not setting anything in stone.

The new facilities planning process came about following a proposal from district staff in 2023 to consolidate some of the district’s elementary schools to curb costs in the face of declining student enrollment. Specifically, the proposal called for the closure of 9th District Elementary and the redistricting of the students therein. This proposal proved to be unpopular among district families, however, and the board eventually tabled a vote on the proposal to explore alternatives. Thus, the new master facilities serves as a means by which the board can do a deep assessment of the district’s facilities and consider if consolidation is truly necessary.

The district contracted with architectural firm SHP to lead the planning process. Starting in early 2024, SHP began gathering information about the district through community fora, focus groups and the establishment of a community advisory team, which met six times between April 2024 and January 2025. SHP Architect Jeff Parker told Saturday’s attendees the advisory team began with about 35 people but eventually winnowed itself down to about 15 dedicated members.

The process explored the values and aspirations among community families (and students themselves) and also assessed the possible financial implications of various proposed changes. Additionally, SHP also assessed each building’s effectiveness as an instructional facility and assigned them numerical scores. Other assessments included projections on overall student enrollment.

Several insights came out of the process: First, families advocated for a full-day preschool service across the district. Secondly, while some leaned towards closing 9th District, about half of all individuals who took part in the process did not want any elementaries to close. Finally, there was a desire among district families for what was dubbed an innovation hub at the Holmes campus, where students could study in-demand jobs in technology and science that weren’t usually offered in conventional classrooms. As a comparison, SHP showed a video of one such project that occurred in Eminence, Kentucky.

15 options for how the district could reorganize its facilities arose out of the community advisory process, but several options were eliminated as being simply inappropriate for the district or as being financial untenable. There was also some discussion Saturday of either renovating or replacing Latonia Elementary, but, again, these discussions were preliminary.

Board President Tom Haggard emphasized that the options on the table were community led.

“It’s important for the board to see this really wasn’t prescriptive,” Haggard said. “They got to come up with any idea they wanted.”

SHP had identified four options that seemed to be the most popular, based on conversations with the community. All of them required some redistricting of students, one kept all of the elementary schools open and all proposed relocating the district’s central administrative operations out of the current central office. The selling of excess facilities also featured in each of the options.

SHP had printed out large posters of each option, which showed how the redistricting might occur, which buildings (if any) would close and the financial burden of each option.

Attendees then wrote what they viewed as the pros and cons of each option, as well as questions that still needed to be answered, on sticky notes and posted them onto the posters.

Discussion followed, and there were still some key issues that needed to be resolved before any concrete decisions could be made. Firstly, there is currently no public funding mechanism in place to provide full-day preschool, and the attendees were unsure if the political will at the state level would change any time in the near future.

Another question that came up was if the community advisory team was truly representative of the district and its families. Likewise, what would be the cost of providing full-day preschool per student? Would closing a neighborhood elementary school like 9th District (which three of the four options propose) be worthwhile? Would students be lost in the redistricting process? What if student enrollment went up, rather than down like current projections? These were all questions the team felt needed to be answered before any decisions could be made.

“We are not trying to cause anxiety for anyone in our community,” Haggard said, “but we do have to think about things differently, and we do have to be bold and try to figure out how we can be providing the best possible opportunities for kids.”

You can learn more about the master facilities planning process, including information on the community advisory process, at futurecovingtonschools.com.