Dallas County School Board members discussed the sale of Shiloh Elementary School Monday during the regularly scheduled school board meeting and voted to hold a public auction for the property.

The school, located at 6200 Dallas County Road 30 in Sardis, closed at the end of the 2012-2013 school year due to a dramatic drop in enrollment.

School board attorney John Pilcher said he will start running notices in The Selma Times-Journal in July that will state the details of the auction. The notices, he said, will run once or twice a week for about three weeks. And the auction should take place at the Dallas County Courthouse in early August, Pilcher estimated.

The board agreed, under Pilcher’s advisement, to solicit bids in three separate parts.

“What we would do is I would advertise it as parcel one and parcel two, and then I would also auction it in mass as one big parcel, so which ever one brought in the best price, would be presented to the board,” Pilcher said, meaning the buildings and the vacant land will be auctioned for bids separately and then together, and the highest price will then be considered.

“I won’t sell it that day,” Pilcher told the board. “I’ll just solicit bids.”

In order to divide the property into two separate parcels — buildings and land — the school board would have to get a survey, something they haven’t done yet.

“So the question is whether me as a lawyer could adequately come up with a legal description without a surveyor,” Pilcher said. “Sometimes you can; sometimes you can’t.”

Pilcher said he had no idea what to expect as far as the bidding prices for the property, but noted that the Dallas County School Board started buying those properties back in the 1900s.

Assistant superintendent for Dallas County Schools Don Willingham told the board he would draft a list of items that are currently within the property, such as tables, desks, chairs and other school equipment, and let the board know where those items will be going for the upcoming school year.

The board agreed that surplus items that will no longer be used for educational purposes within the system will be added to the public auction in August.