Petition drive starts Thursday (05/09/07)

BERNE - The petition drives begin Thursday. "Tomorrow is the green light," South Adams Schools superintendent Cathy Egolf said this morning.

Volunteers from South Adams Taxpayers for Education Excellence will pick up yellow petitions at 8 a.m. Thursday at the Adams County Courthouse and begin circulating them throughout the school community.

Those petitions are in support of a $25 million building project that would replace the aging elementary and middle schools and renovate South Adams High School. Blue petitions in opposition to the project will also be circulated for a 30-day period.

At the end of the 30 days, the project will either move forward or be shelved.

"We're ready to go," Egolf said. "I believe we have volunteers for every street in Berne, every street in Geneva, and every street in Linn Grove and volunteers in every township to walk and do the petition drive."

The South Adams School Board has been weighing the school construction and renovation project for years and earlier this year proposed a $35 million bond issue to fund it.

That was scaled back to $25 million after taxpayer objections, but the lowered price tag was not enough to prevent a remonstrance petition in opposition.

While confident that the yellow petitions will prevail, Egolf expressed frustration with the remonstrance, which has effectively delayed the project for a year.

"It's going to cost us an extra one to two million more, assuming we win, and that irritates me," she said.

Meeting Tuesday night, the South Adams board:

•Accepted the resignation of Tom White as assistant principal at the high school. White had expressed a desire to return to the classroom and will be teaching the Project Lead the Way program next school year.

•Hired Jason Shuck as an agriculture teacher and Josh Roby as a science teacher. Roby, who lost his South Adams teaching job during a reduction in force in 2008, will replace retiring teacher Dale Mertz.

•Approved a reassignment of two key administrators beginning with the 2008 school year. Jeff Rich and Scott Litwiller will essentially swap positions, with Rich becoming middle school principal and Litwiller becoming elementary principal.[[In-content Ad]]