Oktibbeha County School Conservator Margie Pulley rescinded a reverse referendum to issue bonds to help build a new Starkville and Oktibbeha County 6-7 grade middle school for the soon-to-be consolidated districts on Monday. 
In 2013, the state Legislature approved House Bill 716, forcing the consolidation of the school districts and created a commission to guide the consolidation, which will happen July 1. Pulley was appointed conservator of the county school district. 
The seven-member commission consists of representatives from the Starkville School District, Oktibbeha  County School District, Mississippi State University and the Mississippi Department of Education. 
Lewis Holloway,  Starkville school superintendent and commission member, said the school district has been studying for over a year to figure out the most effective way to consolidate the two districts. 
“We have been talking to MSU about possibly building a school that would be a teaching center for developing teachers at MSU,” Holloway said. 
Mississippi State University has identified the 44 acres on which the school would be built, Holloway said, near the intersection of George Perry Street and Highway 182. The school building would be of a unique design that would allow education students to passively observe the classes being taught by skilled SSD teachers. 
Holloway said studies indicate on average, it takes a teacher five to six years to become experienced enough to become truly effective.  He said other studies show new teachers quit teaching before their fourth year. The objective of the new middle school would be to address the disconnect between what education students are being taught and the actual classroom environment.
“We’ve visited some schools and we’ve come up with a school model that we think fit that very well,” Holloway said. “But the problem is, how do you pay for that?”
The solution the commission found was to file a reverse-referendum, which would allow the county school district, as led by Pulley, to issue $30 million in bonds without having to take the matter to a vote. Normally the referendum would require a supermajority vote of 60 percent by the school district’s voters on a bond issue election, before the bonds could be released.
“Referendums are hard to pass,” Holloway said. “They are hard to pass in the best of times.”
A reverse-referendum circumvents the need for a vote unless a petition containing 20 percent of the county’s population’s signatures is filed within 14 days of the legal notice being printed in the local news.  
Oktibbeha County citizens have filed such a petition after the legal outlining the reverse-referendum appeared in the newspapers Dec. 22, 2014. 
Pulley simply rescinded the reverse referendum, taking the bond off the table, to save the trouble of a vote. 
Dennis Daniels, former member of the military and current candidate for the office of  Oktibbeha County Supervisor in District 3, said he went door to door gathering signatures for the petition. 
“From our point of view it all came about (on Dec. 22, 2014) with no publicity or any kind of talk about it. It just kind of happened,” Daniels said. “People were upset that there was not enough notice. It gave the impression to the county residents that they were trying to slip it by.”
The reverse referendum was first recommended by the commission during its meeting a little over a year ago on Jan. 24, 2014. 
The signatures on the petition were authenticated by the Oktibbeha County Circuit Clerk.
Holloway said in the past, Oktibbeha County has never approved a single bond issue funding education. 
Jennifer Gregory, CEO of the Greater Starkville  Development Partnership, said the organization voted unanimously to support both the consolidation and the reverse referendum. Gregory said  the GSDP has been circulating a reverse petition that would allow people who signed the original petition to remove their names. 
“Many people indicated that they were only told that this form was to prevent their taxes from going up,” Gregory said. 
According to the Starkville Dispatch, Pulley said the district followed legislation and the citizens exercised their rights. Pulley said she will now consider modifying the dollar amount for the issue. 
“The success of the consolidation and the general performance of the public school system is integral to  MSU,” said Devon Brenner, department head of  curriculum, instruction, and special education at MSU.