Tough questions need answers

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of commentaries regarding the possibility of closing one or more schools in Jay County because of financial difficulties.
Which is it?
Does a town’s decline lead to the loss of its school? Or does the loss of a town’s school lead inevitably to its decline?
Probably both are true.
Pennville residents acknowledge that their town has seen better days, but they’d also argue that the fastest way to speed Pennville’s decline is to close its elementary school.
Since the closing of Pennville Elementary School was a part of all of the consolidation options outlined for Jay School Board last week, the town feels a bit as if it has a target on its back.
Three of the options outlined by superintendent Tim Long and CSO Architects last week involved new construction and pretty dramatic restructuring of how the existing buildings would be used.
But with a board that’s not likely to be interested in taking on new construction debt, those three look — from here at least — to be non-starters.
That just leaves Pennville, with a projected annual savings of $300,000 for the general fund if the 90 students now attending that school are moved to other classrooms.
For some, that may look like an easy and quick fix. It may also look inevitable.
But there are some tough questions that deserve answers.
Questions like:
•Does it make sense to close schools for a projected savings of $300,000 a year when a retired Jay County High School principal has just told the board he estimates $500,000 is spent annually on “questionable” decisions by the administration?
•Are there personnel cuts that could be made at the central office that could result in similar savings? Jay Schools has a director of teacher effectiveness, a director of testing and assessment and a pre-school director. Can all of those positions be justified?
•In an era when the state has changed the rules on where students must attend classes, couldn’t there be a net outward migration of students from the Pennville area? Would closing Pennville result in kids going to school in Montpelier rather than in Jay County?
•As a practical matter, has sufficient consideration been given to the problems of transporting Pennville-area students to Redkey Elementary School during times of heavy rain and routine flooding on Indiana 1?
•To what extent was the rating of individual school buildings tied to the corporation’s willingness to invest in those buildings? Pennville and Judge Haynes Elementary both ranked poorly in the architect’s review, but both have seen less capital investment in recent years.
On top of that, there are legitimate questions of equity  — Is it fair for one teacher to have 15 students and another who is paid the same amount to have 25? And has every possible step been taken to create greater cost-per-pupil efficiency been considered short of closing schools?
There’s plenty to talk about. — J.R.
Next: Let’s talk about it.