Savannah School Community Meeting

A school district town hall meeting gets heated, as parents try to get some answers from district officials. One of the chief concerns: the decision to keep Hodge Elementary School open and how that affects Beach High School.

Last week, the school board decided to vote Hodge Elementary open. Hodge was set to close at the end of this school year, so it could be torn down to make way for a new Beach High School. Chatham County voters had approved the closure in 2006 under E-SPLOST, the penny sales tax for education.

"Hodge will remain in the community, either at the old location where the school is, hopefully where it used to be. You're not going to take Hodge out of this community, we will always have three schools, correct?" one parent asked Dr. Thomas Lockamy, the superintendent.

"I want a state of the art school for Beach. There will be a medical high school component added to the Beach campus, and in addition we want to keep the Hodge Elementary within the attendance zone, so the children don't have to be bused out of the community and make it a true K-12 education community," says Lockamy.

"Whatever the decision we will move forward in making sure that students either have the best possible transition or the best possible continued education where we are," says Hodge principal Donna Myers.

"The academic aspect of the room space, the capacity, how it's going to be used. the green space, the health space that was just mentioned, for the entire corridor, especially Beach construction. I want to stay on top of that," said another parent.

School officials say they do not have a timeline yet for Beach High construction, but the plans are progressing.

Hodge Elementary students will attend school in the current building this fall.

Lockamy says the school system will make a decision within the next six months about where Hodge will be located in the future, but the new location will be within the same attendance zone.