Habersham board approves two off-site reunification locations for Mountain Ed School emergencies

Habersham County’s board approved Mountain Ed School’s request to use the Ruby Fulbright Aquatic Center parking lot as the school’s first emergency reunification location and the Fairgrounds lot as its second. Signed Sept. 16, 2025, minutes record a motion, second and 4-0 vote on the request, which Principal Sherrie Whitten brought forward as the school revised its Emergency Safety Plan.

The decision identifies where students, teachers and families would be directed if an emergency made it necessary to pick up students away from the school itself. Mountain Ed School serves 140 students from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, according to the minutes, making a predesignated reunification site a practical part of planning for an event that disrupts the normal end of the school day.

The matter first appeared as a request on a board agenda to use the center as an emergency pick-up location. Whitten then presented the request during the school’s safety-plan revision, moving the proposal from a scheduled agenda item to a board action. The signed minutes describe the board’s approval of two locations rather than only the Aquatic Center site originally listed on the agenda.

Whitten, speaking for Mountain Ed School, sought designated off-site locations for emergency pick-up. The board backed that request unanimously, selecting the Aquatic Center parking lot as the primary site and the Fairgrounds lot as the alternate. The minutes also say Terry Lannon signed memorandums of understanding requested by Whitten, indicating that arrangements for the locations were part of the school’s request.

The approval and the signed memorandums are completed actions documented in the minutes; they are not a record of an emergency activation or of students being moved to either site. The record establishes the order of the two locations but does not describe such operational details as notification procedures, transportation, staffing, access, or how families would be instructed during an incident. No competing claims or opposition to the request are recorded in the cited materials.

The next public development to watch is a Mountain Ed School safety-plan update or a later board record explaining how the Aquatic Center and Fairgrounds reunification sites would work in practice. What remains undecided in the public record is the detailed emergency procedure—not the board’s selection of the primary and backup locations.