School District 55 will send Holley and Crawfordsville kindergarten students to Oak Heights next school year unless higher enrollment numbers materialize, and Supt. Larry Horton will begin investigating the process for closing schools, should it become necessary.
The move was included in a list prioritizing budget cuts to meet a projected $1.1 million revenue shortfall in the 2010-11 budget, but Horton told the School Board at its regular meeting on June 14 that the administrators would still recommend the move, regardless of the revenue shortfall.
The district is projecting four kindergarten students in the Holley and Crawfordsville areas next school year, Horton said. The district will move the Holley-Crawfordsville kindergarten teacher position to the district’s federally funded Title I program at half-time next year.
If more register, the district would make an adjustment, Horton said. If 12 students are registered, the district would probably go ahead and restore the Holley-Crawfordsville class.
In 2005, the district completed a facilities study, which established thresholds for closing or merging Holley and Crawfordsville schools.
The trigger is a combined total of 150 or fewer students at the two schools or a total of 60 or fewer students at an individual school, Horton said.
Right now, Holley has 91 students while Crawfordsville has 84 students, for a total of 175. Holley has 17 sixth-grade students in a blended class, the largest class in the district; and Crawfordsville has nine sixth-grade students.
As the sixth-graders move on and the projected kindergarten students move in, the schools would have a combined total of 153 students, just above the trigger. With the kindergarten students moving to Oak Heights, the schools will have a combined enrollment of 149, just under the trigger.
One of Horton’s homework assignments this summer will be to learn what the law is and how to close schools because the threshold appears imminent, he said.
“There are tremendous numbers from Holley attending the Charter School,” Horton said. “I don’t know why that is. I’m not even going to try to speculate.”
Among the proposed cuts for next year, Holley will lose its half-time administrator, with other administrators likely filling in to support a head teacher.
“After being there a year, a half-time administrator is too much time for what the job entails,” said Principal Jack Nickerson, who also teaches in the district’s opportunity room, which is located at Holley.
Without the administrator, Horton said, the district will probably move the Opportunity Room to another school.
The Opportunity Room is an alternative education class for elementary students from across the district.
The Opportunity Room generates most of the discipline issues at Holley, Nickerson said.
The reductions list proposes cutting two full-time equivalent custodial positions at Holley and Crawfordsville to one.
With three classrooms at Holley, Horton said, he asked how the district can justify a full-time employee.
“Again, we’re trying to figure out how to keep those two small schools open,” Horton said. Administrators haven’t figured out the logistics yet, but each school will have only a half-time custodian.
Chanz Keeney and Dave VanDerlip, representatives of Holley and Crawfordsville respectively, oppose closing the schools.
“I think it would be a real mistake,” VanDerlip said. “They could adjust the boundaries and send some more kids out there.”
Such a move could also damage public support for the district in the future, he said. He believes that substantial savings could be found by freezing salaries.
“My thoughts on it, obviously I’m against it,” Keeney said. “I want to keep those rural schools open.”
Holley had some of the best test scores in the district last year, he said. He echoed VanDerlip about changing attendance boundaries.
Six or seven years down the road, when Sweet Home, Holley and Crawfordsville are growing again, the district will need those schools, he said.
It’s going to come down to what the community wants, he said; and if the PTCs and residents rally like the swimmers did with the pool, he thinks it can make a difference.