The District 55 School Board will likely begin meeting at different locations throughout the district during its regular meetings, but the district declined to further explore an idea to restructure the board itself.
Board memberJohn Fassler brought both ideas to the board. He told the board he had been asked a number of questions by different people. Among the questions, he was asked why the board always meets in Sweet Home instead of, say, Crawfordsville.
He thought it might be a good idea and might encourage the public to attend the meetings, he said. It seemed like people were more interested in this idea than changing the structure and composition of the board, the second proposal he brought to the board.
“I think it’s a great idea,” board member Leena Neuschwander said of the rotating meetings.
“I’m definitely for it,” board member Chanz Keeney said. “Some people might get mixed up. The people that follow it would catch on.”
Under the arrangement, the board members could tour a different school facility before each of their monthly meeting, Keeney suggested, after asking how many board members had actually been inside all of the district’s schools in the last year.
Supt. Larry Horton said he would check the district’s calendar and check with administrators to make sure it would work logistically and then set meeting dates at the different schools.
A number of people have approached Fassler about the composition of the School Board, he said. They have asked him why five people run for one seat, while two run for another and one for another as in the May election.
The board is the only nine-member board for a K-12 district in state, Horton said. The issue has been discussed two or three times in the past, he said.
It has six region-specific positions and three at-large positions, all chosen by all of the voters in the district, although the candidates must come from the region they represent.
“They asked why wouldn’t they just be lumped together,” Fassler said. “I said, ‘I don’t know.'”
So he did a little research and discovered the current arrangement was established in 1964 when the district was put together, he said. “Each outlying school would have a board member with at-large members to fill other slots.”
But Cascadia and Liberty schools are gone, he said, so he put together a proposal to create a seven-member or nine-member board, all at-large, in which a third of the seats would be up for election each year.
If five positions were open, voters would vote for five candidates out of whoever filed for the School Board, similar to the Sweet Home City Council. The top five vote-getters would be elected.
He didn’t get a clear picture of what people he asked thought about a seven- or nine-member board, he said. People seemed split 50-50 on that idea.
“I certainly think it needs to be fixed,” Chairman Mike Reynolds said. “But I’m not certain the time is now because of the cost.”
Liberty children attend Holley School, which is like two representatives for one school, so to speak, Reynolds said.
“I think this is something that needs to change but not right now.”
Horton estimated the cost of an election to change the composition and structure of the board would be between $4,000 and $5,000.
“I personally like the nine-member board,” board member Jason Redick said. “It creates discussion, and it gets more of these ideas kicked around.”
He pointed out that all voters vote in all the elections, which means Keeney, for example, may be from Holley but represents the community.
“I think there’s some historical significance to these outlying areas,” Redick said. Were a proposal like this to go forward, “Holley might fear getting railroaded.”
Both Holley and Crawfordsville have been the subject of discussions about closing schools in the past decade.
“It’s worked for 45 years,” Redick said. If it’s not broken, the board could end up messing it up.
The board did not take any action on the proposal, nor did any board member propose action later.
Present at the meeting were board members Keeney, Neuschwander, Weber, Reynolds, Fassler, Redick, David VanDerlip and Jenny Daniels.
Daniels and Weber were sworn in at the beginning of the meeting. Reynolds was reappointed chairman of the board. Keen was named secretary, and Redick was named vice chairman. All votes were unanimous with no other nominations for any of the officer positions.