Monday night, School District 55 Supt. Larry Horton told parents and board members that if he had to make a recommendation right then, he could not recommend closing Holley.
The combined enrollment of Holley and Crawfordsville schools is projected at 142 for the 2010-11 school year. The kindergarten class is projected at four, and the district is moving those four students to Oak Heights. In 2009-10, the schools had an enrollment of 177 students, counting the 10-student opportunity room, an alternative education program for the elementary schools districtwide.
Under a board policy established in 2005, the district planned to begin a process to shut down the schools. Over the next year, Horton had told the board last month, he would be learning and implementing that process.
After the news reached the families of the two communities, parents, the PTCs and the board members representing those areas began circulating petitions and planning how to fight the possible closure.
The group had some 450 signatures, including some from outside of the two affected communities, said Chanz Keeney, the board representative for the Holley area.
Horton said Monday night that he wanted to keep the schools open.
Cutting at Holley is helping keep it comparable to other schools, Horton said. The administrator has been cut, and Dave Goetz, vice principal at the junior high, will spend 10 hours a week there, with other administrators helping out as needed.
“It is not the best situation, but I have to get Holley costs down in order to show the other school communities that it’s still semi-economical to keep that school open,” Horton said. It’s not fair to other schools to spend $1,000 a year more per student at a school like Holley.
If School District 55 shuts down Holley or Crawfordsville school, parents are likely to send their children to Sweet Home Charter School, Keeney said. That will probably eliminate any savings that may come from closing the school and is probably one of the biggest reasons not to close Holley School.
The Charter School is geographically closer to those families, Keeney said. The Liberty area, where the Charter School is located, is within the Holley attendance boundaries. One parent told him that she can look out her window and see the Charter School.
“Geography is one thing,” Keeney said. “But also there’s a bitterness. People keep threatening to close the rural schools.”
Horton estimated that if Holley were closed and 20 students were to switch to the Charter School instead of attending Oak Heights or Crawfordsville, the lost revenue would eclipse any savings from closing the school.
Given that parents were indicating a willingness to switch to the Charter School, he could not recommend closing Holley at this time.
Confirming that parents would switch to the Charter School will be his first priority as he begins studying whether to close a school this year, Horton said. “I’m not going to spend all year. I’m going to find out how many parents are going to send their kids to the Charter School, Crawfordsville or Oak Heights.”
Horton and Keeney both said that the Charter School was not a factor when the policy was created in 2005.
Keeney also emphasized the performance of the Holley and Crawfordsville schools academically.
Holley and Crawfordsville are part of the School District and should have their schools, Keeney said. It’s just part of having the communities as part of the district.
“Just because kids are out there doesn’t mean our kids should be discriminated against,” Keeney said.
They’re rural, and that may mean they’re more expensive, said David VanDerlip, who represents Crawfordsville. It’s the same with electricity and roads. Those are more costly because the areas aren’t as dense as the urban areas.
“If you look at saving money in the district, it’s not in these schools,” Keeney added. “If you were only saving $100,000, that would be absorbed so quickly, and then next year, you wouldn’t even notice it.”
“They’re the center of our communities,” said Julie Murray, the parent of four students at Holley. That’s where the community goes for activities, and the children have a sense of belonging.
The PTC raised more than $20,000 last year, said Betty Miner, the mother of two Holley students. That kind of fund-raising would be lost.
“My kids won’t go to a big school,” Miner said. “I know the other ones are looking at the Charter School.”
Horton recognized that the schools are like a family and a community hub.
“You’re not just closing a school,” Horton said. “You’re closing down part of the community, a hundred years of history. Nobody here wants to close one of these schools.”
“We will do whatever we need to do to keep that school open,” Goetz said. “I think all of us in this room want the same.”
Business Manager Kevin Strong prepared a per-student comparison of costs among the district’s five elementary schools for the 2010-11 school year prior to the meeting. The comparisons use an average cost per teacher to avoid penalizing schools with veteran staff members.
Crawfordsville was the most expensive at $7,908. Compared to the less expensive Holley School, the bulk of the cost is in a federal Title I teacher, a kindergarten teacher who will remain at Crawfordsville with the federal dollars next school year, Horton said.
Holley costs $6,358 per student following the reductions in the 2010-11 budget. Foster and Hawthorne cost slightly more at $6,505 and $6,396 respectively. Oak Heights is the least expensive in the district at $5,747 per student.