Early Voting Starts Monday for Referendum on Dist. 2 Middle Schools Future
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Voters in Anderson School District Two are already starting to weigh a question that is both a practical necessity and an emotional civic lament: whether to approve a bond referendum that would help merge two aging middle schools, a proposal rooted in the district’s long, stitched-together history of consolidation, segregation, and adaptation. Early voting for the special election opens Monday, and runs through May 1, at the Anderson County Voter Registration and Elections Office in Anderson.
The referendum will appear as a special election on May 2, and it asks voters in Anderson School District Two to decide the fate of a plan that would address the district’s two middle schools, both of them housed in buildings of which portions were built in the 1950s. Belton Middle School sits in the former Geer Gantt High School, while Honea Path Middle School occupies the old Honea Path High School building, and both have needs that district officials describe as extensive and costly.
Early voting is scheduled for Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., at 301 N. Main Street in Anderson. Voters will need a valid photo ID. Absentee voting is also available, with the last day to receive absentee applications being Tuesday, by 5 p.m.
Election-day polling places will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and one precinct has been moved for this election only: Belton Annex voters who normally cast ballots at the City of Belton Community Recreation Center should instead vote at First Baptist Church, 105 Brown Ave., Belton. The notice also warns that voters should follow directional “Vote Here” signs because exact polling locations within some sites may shift due to Saturday scheduling conflicts.
What gives the referendum its particular gravity is that these are not just any school buildings; they are artifacts of a county’s educational history, built in an era when schools were smaller, segregated, and conceived for a different century. The current Belton-Honea Path High School was created in 1966 when two schools merged, and Geer Gantt, the historic African-American school, was folded into the system in 1969 during integration.
That history lingers in the proposal now before voters. The district is asking residents to look at buildings that have outlived their intended era and decide whether to spend money on a future that, in some ways, is already waiting in the cracks and leaks of the present and to consider a new consolidated school built with expansion and the future in mind.
