Board discusses future

Parents of students at Pennville and Redkey elementary schools urged Jay School Board to explore “every possible avenue” in cost cutting Monday before deciding to close any school in the corporation.
Faced with deficit spending in the short-term and declining enrollment in the long-term, the board has been struggling over the past several months to find spending cuts.
And those discussions have included potential of school closings at some point down the road.
“We do have to look at everything,” said superintendent Tim Long.
“Closing a building is not a goal, but being fiscally responsible is a goal,” said board member Greg Wellman. “We have to have a plan just in case. … Maybe it’s not fair for us to keep saying Pennville and Redkey, because they’re just examples.”
Pennville Elementary School is the smallest in the Jay system, and Redkey Elementary School has seen sharp enrollment declines in the past several years.
“If you close a school in a rural area like Pennville, you’re closing the whole town down,” said Pennville parent Joe Vinson. “We definitely don’t want that to happen to Pennville.”
Redkey parent Rhonda Monroe said, “It’s a very important school to us.”
Board members stressed that there are no plans to close any schools in the 2014-15 school year, but they acknowledged continuing declines in enrollment mean tough decisions lie ahead.
“Right now, the rumors are very wild,” said board member Ron Laux. “There’s nothing in the radar that’s going to close schools this August.
“This group’s doing all it can. It’s going to take several weeks, maybe three to four months.”
“This is a long-term process,” added board president Mike Masters.
Vinson urged the board to take a look at boundaries for the elementary schools, noting that Pennville’s service area has been down-sized twice.
“Changing the boundaries would change the Pennville situation,” he said, noting that some Amish families currently sending children to Bloomfield Elementary School would prefer to send them to Pennville if school bus routes could be changed.
“That’s something that can be explored,” said Long.
But moving students from one school to another does not erase the fact that overall enrollment is dropping.
“The long-term projection … is what this is really all about,” Long added.
Looking to the future, said Wellman, “We’re probably going to get smaller as a county.”
Long urged the board to hire CSO Architects, an Indianapolis firm that has done extensive work for Jay Schools, to do an assessment of the current buildings in advance of any potential school closing in the future.
But board members said they felt that is premature.
“Are we really ready to do that?” asked board member Beth Krieg, who had earlier expressed frustration that so much of the focus had been on potential school closings rather than immediate cost-cutting. “I thought we were going into this looking at other things instead of closing buildings,” she said earlier in the meeting.
“From my perspective, it’s a little bit early,” said Laux.
Instead, a CSO representative will be asked to attend a future board meeting to discuss the possibility of doing a building study. The estimated cost of such a study is $7,500.
Business manager Brad DeRome outlined about $1.2 million in spending reductions and accounting changes intended to help the school corporation break even in the general fund at the end of 2014.
Jay Schools has finished recent years with about $3.1 million in the general fund, an amount the board has said is prudent. That dropped to just a little over $2 million at the end of 2013.
DeRome projected savings from the resignations and retirements of teachers who will not be replaced, along with reduced spending on medical insurance, consultants, travel and summer employees. Some expenditures on equipment, utilities and maintenance will be paid from the capital projects fund to provide further general fund relief.
Long indicated that 8 to 11 teaching positions left vacant by resignation or retirement won’t be filled next year, most of them at Jay County High School. Another eight instructional aide positions will not be filled.
“I do not contemplate a reduction in force,” he said.
Masters, who has focused on getting the general fund balance back into healthy shape, said that next year is when the board will see the real benefits of its current cost-cutting moves.
“’15 is when we’ll know if it really worked,” he said.
In other business, the board:
•Approved an increase of 10 cents in the cost of school lunches and a five-cent increase in the cost of ala carte milk for the 2014-15 school year.
•Approved an increase in preschool fees of $5 per semester in the next school year.
•Approved an increase of 50 cents an hour for the latch-key program in the next school year.
•Approved keeping substitute teacher pay at $65 a day and substitute bus drivers at $60 per day in the next school year.
•Approved middle school language arts textbooks and textbooks for dual credit at JCHS as recommended.
•Approved changes in student handbooks to reflect changes in state law and board policies.
•Accepted the resignations of Myia Starr and Gary Wilson from the Dunkirk Public Library Board.
•Approved the retirements of instructional assistant Anita Childers, bus driver Anita Frasher, kitchen manager Jackie Houck, instructional assistant Sue Trobridge, custodian Jerry Davis and East Jay Middle School principal Lee Newman.
•Accepted the resignations of English teacher Dolphus Stephens, instructional assistant Gene Pope, English teacher Katie Lanter, instructional assistant Heather Hedges, physical education teacher Ryan VanSkyock, instructional assistant Theresa Amstutz, instructional assistant Hilda Disinger, instructional assistant Michael Karn and biology teacher Robert Green.
•Approved a leave of absence for speech pathologist Shalee Myron.
•Approved extracurricular assignments for Lori DeRome as Judge Haynes Elementary School yearbook sponsor and Doug Arbuckle as softball coach at JCHS.
•Accepted the extracurricular resignations of Ryan VanSkyock as assistant boys’ basketball coach, Brian McEvoy as JCHS cross country coach, Jenny Stout as JCHS assistant cheer coach, Andrea Oswalt as JCHS assistant cheer coach, Anita Clott as yearbook sponsor and Just Say No sponsor at Judge Haynes, and Brat Brandenburg as West Jay Middle School wrestling coach.
•Approved field trips by the boys’ basketball team, the JCHS archery team, the girls’ basketball team, East Jay and West Jay eighth grade students, JCHS foreign language clubs, JCHS technical theatre students and the West Jay archery team.
•Approved bus requests from the Jay County Summer Swim Team and The Rock church.
•Accepted a $250 donation from Commercial Electric Co., a $1,000 donation from POET Bio-refining, a $500 donation from Weaver Popcorn, a $1,000 donation from Sonoco Protective Solutions and a $500 donation from Fort Recovery Industries, all for the new Advanced Manufacturing program at JCHS.

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