EAST SPENCER — The Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education spent a large portion of its Monday work session discussing how to proceed with county wide meetings on school consolidation.

Much of the discussion focused on whether the board should form a committee to run consolidation scenarios, or handle those discussions in public meetings.

Board Chairman Josh Wagner said forming a committee to run scenarios doesn’t make sense when the board recently paid an agency to do capacity and efficiency studies.

“I don’t want to get too many people involved when all we’re looking at is what we need to do financially,” he said.

Board member Chuck Hughes agreed.

“I think committees can be self defeating,” he said.

Board member Travis Allen jumped in and said that committees are often slow, and timeliness is one of the board’s priorities in the consolidation discussion. Hearing back from a committee would take too long if the board hopes to start community meetings in April.

“If a committee’s going to run scenarios for six months, what are we going to a town hall for?” he asked.

While the board plans to start with a community meeting in western Rowan to discuss the merging of Woodleaf and Cleveland elementary schools, Allen said it’s too early to start having discussions in southern and eastern Rowan.

“I think it’s kind of defeating the purpose,” he said.

Superintendent Dr. Lynn Moody, who first recommended forming a committee, cautioned the board about potential community backlash from running closing scenarios in a public forum.

“Every thought that’s generated in a brainstorming session will be public record,” she said.

Moody said that the board may be underestimating the emotional response that community members would have to the discussion of closing schools.

“I think it is critically important that you not name schools, but you educate the community in these town hall meetings,” she said.

Having a public work session where board members held a simple conversation about what the district would look like if they closed a specific school could unintentionally upset a lot of people, she said. A committee would eliminate that possibility.

Susan Cox spoke up in support of forming a committee.

“No, it’s not the fastest way to do it, but in the long run I think it would be the best way to do it,” she said.

“People are going to be upset either way, we know that, but we don’t want to ask for unnecessary issues,” Hunter said.

Hunter said he “didn’t want to say everyone was right,” but mentioned that several good points were made. He recommended going forward with the community meetings, and providing the public with the same information and capacity studies that the board received. He also said it was only rational for the board to run the scenarios itself, regardless of what conclusions people may draw.

Hunter recommended a retreat or a board meeting dedicated specifically to talk about school consolidation, as squeezing the discussion into 20 or 30 minutes in a board meeting was not doing the subject, or the community, justice.

Cox then recommended proceeding with the proposed county-wide meeting schedule and using it as an opportunity to provide the public with information and test the waters. Hughes recommended that they provide the same information at all county meetings.

“We can do all of that without naming schools,” he said.

Hughes said that people will look at the information and know consolidation is coming, but it’s not up to the community to make the best decision for the school system — that’s the board’s job.

“We can’t let emotional issues drive the train here,” he said.

There was no reason for the board to feel that they would need to make a decision at the meetings, he said.

“We’re definitely going to have to have a retreat,” Wagner said.

The board agreed to have a retreat to talk about how to proceed before making any decisions about town meetings or forming a committee. Retreat dates will be discussed at the Feb. 22 business meeting.